gM)IARY  SECTION  VIII 

<iAmerican  Ambulance 
yield  Service 


California 
legional 
'acility 


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DIARY  of  SECTION  VIII 

AMERICAN  AMBULANCE 
FIELD  SERVICE 


PRINTED   ONLY    FOR 

PRIVATE   DISTRIBUTION 

1917 


EDITOR'S    NOTE 

The  human  interest  of  this  record  sufficiently  justifies 
publication,  but  it  is  printed  primarily  because  its  story  is 
typical  of  the  day's  work  of  every  Section  in  the  Field 
Service,  and  in  order  that  those  Americans  vi^ho  have 
given  ambulances  and  such  practical  encouragement  may 
better  realize  how  much  their  cooperation  has  actually 
accomplished. 

There  are  now  nine  of  these  Sections  attached  to  the 
Armies  of  France  at  various  points  along  the  Western 
Front  from  the  Channel  to  Alsace,  and  in  Salonika.  Dur- 
ing the  next  few  weeks  six  more  are  being  equipped  and 
sent  out.  Of  the  men  immediately  going  over  to  drive 
these  new  cars  Chicago  University  is  sending  two  units 
of  twenty-five  men  each,  and  the  Universities  of  Leland 
Stanford,  Harvard,  Wisconsin,  and  California  are  each 
contributing  a  like  unit.  More  than  sixty  other  American 
colleges  and  universities  are  already  represented. 

While  all  these  men  quite  realize  that  their  work  is 
but  a  matter  of  duty  to  the  cause  and  nation  they  wish  to 
serve,  the  mere  fact  of  their  presence  and  voluntary  shar- 
ing of  the  risk  and  labor  involved  has  done  much  to  con- 
vince France  of  the  feeling  that  really  exists  for  her  in 
this  country. 

However   great  the  help   which  new   circumstances 

might  make  it  possible  for  us  to  render  the  Allies  by  men 

and  money,  we  can  never  offer  any  truer  evidence  of 

sympathy  than  by  the  service  of  which  these  pages  bear 

tribute.  H.  D.  S. 

Boston,  Massachusetts 
February,  1917 


MEMBERS    OF   SECTION  VIII 

(At  time  of  writing) 

NAME  ADDRESS  COLLEGE 

Donald  C.  Armour Evanston,  111 Yale 

Malbone  H.  Birckhead New  York Harvard 

Jackson  H.  Boyd Harrisburg,  Pa Princeton 

Thomas  B.  Buffum New  York Harvard 

Charles  T.  Crocker Fitchburg,  Mass 

Alden  Davison New  York Yale 

Arthur  G.  Dodge Weatogue,  Conn Yale 

Charles  S.  Faulkner Keene,  N.  H 

Frederick  M.  Forbush Detroit,  Mich 

Oscar  A.  lasigi Boston,  Mass Mass.  Tech. 

Leslie  P.  Jacobs Laramie,  Wyo Harvard 

Grenville  T.  Keogh New  Rochelle,  N.  Y. . . 

Arthur  E.  Lumsden Chicago,  111 

Austin  B.  Mason  (Chef) Boston,  Mass Harvard 

Bertwall  C.  Read Bloomfield,  N.  J Princeton 

Randolph  Rogers Grand  Rapids, Mich.. . 

William  B.  Seabrook  (Diary)  . .  Atlanta,  Ga Newberry 

M.  C.  Shattuck Bristol,  N.  H Amherst 

Clarence  B.  Shoninger New  York  Yale 

Edward  C.  Sortwell Wiscasset,  Me Harvard 

Aubrey  L.  Thomas Washington,  D.  C —  Princeton 

George  Van  Santvood Troy,  N.  Y Yale 


CITATION    OF   SECTION    VIII. 


EXTRAIT  D'ORDRE  N°  80 

En  execution  des  prescriptions  reglementaires  le  Direc- 
teur  du  Service  de  Sante  du  6^  Corps  d'Armee,  cite  a 
rOrdre  du  Service  de  Sante  du  6*  Corps  d'Armee 
La  Section  Sanitaire  Automobile  Americaine  N"  8 
pour  le  motif  suivant : — 

"Sous  la  direction  du  Lieutenant  Paroissien,  Robert 
Charles,  et  du  Commandant  Adjoint  Americaine  Mason, 
Austin  Blake,  la  Section  Sanitaire  Americaine  N°  8,  com- 
posee  entierement  de  volontaires,  a  assure  remarquable- 
ment  le  service  quotidiendes  evacuations  en  allant  chercher 
le  plus  loin  possible  les  blesses,  malgre  un  bombardement 
parfois  violent, 

"S'est  particulierement  distinguee  le  23  juin,  en  tra- 
versant  a  plusieurs  reprises  la  nappe  de  gaz  toxiques 
sous  un  feu  intense  sans  aucun  repit  pendant  plusieurs 
heures  pour  emmener  au  plus  vite  aux  ambulances  les 
intoxiques." 

Q.  G.  le  4  Aout  1916 
P.  O.  le  Directeur  du  Service  de  Sante 


Translation 
EXTRACT  FROM  ORDER  NO.  80 

In  carrying  out  the  prescribed  regulations  the  Director  of 

the  Sanitary  Service  of  the  6th  Army  Corps  "mentions" 

in  the  orders  of  the  day  of  that  service 
The  American  Automobile  Sanitary  Section  No.  8, 

for  the  reason  following: — 
"Under  the  direction  of  Lieutenant  Robert  Charles 
Paroissien  and  of  the  American  Deputy-Commandant 
Austin  Blake  Mason,  the  American  Sanitary  Section  No. 8, 
composed  entirely  of  volunteers,  has  been  wonderfully 
efficient  in  the  daily  service  of  removing  the  wounded, 
going  very  long  distances  to  fetch  them,  despite  a  bom- 
bardment sometimes  of  great  intensity. 

"It  especially  distinguished  itself  on  June  23,  by  pass- 
ing through  the  sheet  of  poisonous  gas  again  and  again, 
without  respite,  under  a  sustained  fire,  for  many  hours, 
bringing  the  men  prostrated  by  the  gas  to  the  ambulances 
as  speedily  as  possible." 

Headquarters,  h  August,  1916 
P.  O.   The  Director  of  the  Sanitary  Service 


DIARY  OF  SECTION  VIII 

AMERICAN   AMBULANCE 

FIELD   SERVICE 


Mourmelon  le  Grand,  Monday,  May  2g. 

This  is  to  be  the  diary  of  Field  Section  No.  8  of  the 
American  Ambulance,  sent  to  the  front  from  Paris  in 
the  summer  of  1916,  and  begun  this  day  at  Field  Head- 
quarters, where  we  have  become  a  part  of  the  Sixth 
Army  Corps  of  the  Twelfth  Division  of  the  Fourth 
Army.  We  are  quartered  nine  kilometres  behind  the 
front  (between  five  and  six  miles),  and  the  click  of  the 
typewriter  is  accompanied  by  the  steady  booming  of 
distant  guns. 

But  there  is  a  preface  that  must  claim  place  before 
we  tell  of  our  arrival  here,  or  even  of  our  convoy  jour- 
ney through  the  Valley  of  the  Marne — a  preface  written 
at  Paris  on  wood  and  steel,  with  hammer,  chisel,  and  file 
by  the  members  of  the  section,  laboring  for  days  side  by 
side  with  French  mechanics  and  carpenters  in  the  great 
shops  of  Kellner  et  Ses  Fils,  building  and  equipping  the 
ambulance  bodies  and  helping  mount  them  on  Ford  chas- 
sis— a  labor  of  love  which  went  with  whirlwind  speed, 
for  we  were  building  our  own  cars,  and  we  knew  that 
each  screw  driven  home  to  its  socket  by  blistered  but  will- 

1 


Z  DIARY   OF   SECTION   VIII 

ing  hands  meant  that  we  were  that  much  nearer  the  day 

of  our  departure  for  the  front. 

*         *         * 

"Non  palma  sine  pulvere"  was  a  proverb  that  applied, 
in  Roman  days,  to  war  as  well  as  to  Olympic  games,  and 
"Pas  de  gloire  sans  graisse"  would  make  an  even  more 
appropriate  motto  for  our  section.  We  came  expecting 
to  don  steel  helmets,  and  were  handed  greasy  overalls. 
We  accepted  the  overalls  willingly,  and  now  we  have  the 
helmets,  but  let  us  tell  of  the  overalls  first. 

It  was  about  the  first  of  May  that  our  section  as- 
sembled at  Paris  in  the  general  headquarters  of  the 
American  Ambulance  Hospital  in  the  suburb  of  Neuilly- 
sur-Seine.  The  men  were  ready,  but  the  cars  were  not. 
The  chassis  were  standing  in  line  in  Kellner's  great  Car- 
rosserie  works,  near  Sevres,  a  couple  of  miles  beyond 
the  Bois  de  Boulogne,  awaiting  the  construction  of  the 
wooden  bodies  which  were  only  half  completed.  Kellner 
was  short  of  men  and  we  went  to  Kellner's.  Within 
twenty-four  hours  men  among  us  who  had  never  swung 
anything  heavier  than  a  mashie  were  working  at  forge 
and  anvil,  making  heavy  iron  braces  and  hinges ;  others 
drilled  holes  in  the  wood  and  iron;  still  others  screwed 
and  riveted  the  parts  together.  The  sturdy  women  who 
were  working  by  the  hundreds  in  the  place  of  men  who 
had  gone  to  the  front  stopped  building  bomb  cases  and 
handling  heavy  tools  to  watch  us  for  an  instant  from 
time  to  time  and  bring  us  little  sprigs  of  lily  of  the  val- 
ley, "le  muget  qui  porte  bonheur."  The  French  carpen- 
ters, who  soon  learned  that  we  could  work  as  well  as 
they,  and  faster,  became  our  friends  and  frequently  in- 


AMERICAN   AMBULANCE   FIELD   SERVICE  3 

vited  us  to  share  the  coarse  bread  and  red  wine  which 
they  kept  loose  in  the  same  box  with  their  tools,  by  way 
of  refreshment  between  meals. 

In  eight  days  we  had  completed  the  work,  and  in 
another  twenty- four  hours  a  squad  switched  to  the  paint 
shops  and  covered  the  cars  with  the  official  battleship- 
gray.  On  Saturday,  May  20,  moving  pictures  were 
taken  of  the  section  at  work  in  the  shops,  and  on  Sun- 
day morning.  May  21,  the  twenty  cars  were  standing  in 
line  in  front  of  the  hospital  at  Neuilly,  completely 
equipped  and  ready  for  the  field. 

Among  the  men  of  our  section  who  worked  as  labor- 
ers and  mechanics  at  Kellner's  were  many  who  had 
never  handled  tools  before — the  section  includes  profes- 
sional men,  business  men,  university  students,  Rhodes 
scholars,  a  minister  of  the  Gospel,  a  winner  of  golf  tour- 
naments, and  even  a  dramatic  and  musical  critic.  Yet 
none  of  us  felt  it  strange  to  be  working  in  sweat  and 
grease.  Indeed,  our  metamorphosis  seemed  a  slight 
thing  when  some  of  us  learned  that  in  the  great  historic 
porcelain  works  of  Sevres  immediately  across  the  river 
all  art  had  ceased  for  the  time  being,  and  the  men  whose 
brains  and  hands  had  only  a  short  time  before  been  en- 
gaged in  designing  plates  and  vases  of  marvellous  grace 
and  beauty  were  now  one  and  all  occupied  solely  with  the 
rude  labor  of  constructing  immense  rough  earthenware 
jars  and  acid-containers  used  in  the  manufacture  of  high 
explosives. 

No  matter  what  experiences  may  come  to  us  later  we 
shall  never  forget  those  days — the  early  morning  rides 
from  Neuilly  through  the  Bois,  the  trees  in  leaf  and 


4  DIARY   OF   SECTION   VIII 

flower,  the  silent  lakes  with  here  and  there  a  single  swan 
— a  splotch  of  white  on  the  black  surface  of  the  water 
beneath  tall  cypress  groves;  perfect  beauty,  perfect 
peace;  but  the  illusion  is  broken  in  an  instant  by  the 
sound  of  a  bugle — war  is  everywhere  in  France,  even  in 
the  Bois ;  five  minutes  later  we  swing  into  the  river  road 
to  Sevres,  passing  huge  convoy  trucks  covered  with  im- 
mense, bulging  canvas  tops,  occasional  armored  autos, 
aeroplanes  mounted  on  auto  frames  being  carried  to  and 
from  the  aviation  ground  across  the  river — another  five 
minutes  and  we  are  in  the  shops  amid  the  clanging  anvils, 
rasping  drills,  the  clattering  noise  of  a  thousand  files  and 
hammers ;  the  swan  and  cypress  trees  a  thousand  miles 
away  from  our  thoughts,  the  red  forge-fires  burning. 
No,  we  shall  never  forget  Kellner's. 
*         *         * 

All  things  come  to  him  who  waits.  They  told  us  we 
would  probably  start  Sunday  morning.  They  told  us 
we  would  be  sure  to  start  Sunday  afternoon.  They  told 
us  to  be  ready  without  fail  Monday  morning.  They 
promised  there  would  be  no  disappointment  Tuesday 
morning.  It  wasn't  their  fault,  but  by  Tuesday  after- 
noon we  decided  that  maybe  we  would  never  get  away, 
and  stopped  giving  each  other  farewell  dinners.  Wednes- 
day morning.  May  24,  we  started.  We  could  not  really 
believe  it;  but  it  was  true.  We  shook  hands  with  every- 
body and  were  photographed  by  everybody  who  had  a 
camera,  and  started  in  convoy  for  the  military  camp  at 
Versailles.  Lieutenant  Commandant  Charles  Paroissien 
headed  the  procession,  and  Chief  of  Section  Mason 
brought  up  the  rear. 


AMERICAN   AMBULANCE    FIELD    SERVICE  3 

We  arrived  at  Versailles  without  incident  and  were 
packed,  along  with  hundreds  of  other  convoys,  under  the 
trees  on  the  main  avenue  facing  the  palace  entrance. 
Each  man  stood  at  attention  beside  his  car  while  the  line 
was  inspected,  and  afterwards  we  left  our  cars  and  stood 
in  military  line  with  other  troops  for  a  second  personal 
inspection.  The  inspecting  officers  seemed  pleased,  and 
we  caught  a  whispered  word  to  the  effect  that  we  ap- 
peared to  be  the  kind  of  men  who  could  be  counted  on 
to  "condnire  tres  serieiisement."  lasigi  and  Girdwood 
were  singled  out  for  special  attention  because  of  their 
service  medals  from  the  Ambulance,  and  were  com- 
mended for  coming  back  to  France  to  enter  the  service  a 
second  time. 

We  had  been  told  that  we  would  probably  leave  Ver- 
sailles the  same  day,  but  in  the  light  of  the  unavoidable 
repeated  delays  at  Paris  it  is  not  strange  that  we  had  a 
thrill  of  surprise  when  the  announcement  came  after 
luncheon  that  we  had  been  assigned  to  the  military  park 
at  Chalons-sur-Marne,  and  were  to  proceed  there  at 
once. 

And  so  our  first  real  convoy  journey  began,  to  the 
accompaniment  of  a  heavy,  driving  rain.  In  the  first 
car  rode  Lieutenant  Commandant  Paroissien,  with  his 
French  chauffeur,  Thibaud,  and  his  secretary  Yves  Mo- 
reau,  who  bears  the  title  of  "Marechal  du  Logis" ;  two 
other  French  soldiers  are  permanently  attached  to  the 
convoy;  Brigadier  Boncharel,  orderly  to  the  Comman- 
dant, and  Trooper  Salaude,  the  cook  (it  is  rather  a  pity 
that  he  cannot  drop  the  "u"  and  make  himself  into 
Salade,  for  the  only  thing  we  lack  to  complete  our  gas- 


6  DIARY   OF   SECTION   VIII 

tronomic  content  is  something  fresh  and  green).  After 
the  pilot  car  the  twenty  ambulances  followed,  with 
Keogh  as  file-leader  for  the  first  ten  and  Dodge  file- 
leader  for  the  second  ten.  Charlie  Faulkner,  who  knows 
more  about  cars  than  any  other  half  dozen  men  in  the 
section,  tailed  the  procession  with  his  "  camionette," 
while  Section-Chief  Mason,  driving  the  staff  car,  held  a 
tentative  position  in  the  rear,  whizzing  to  the  front  of 
the  convoy  when  necessary  and  scouting  back  and  for- 
ward as  occasion  arose.  Through  the  driving  rain  we 
went  for  several  hours,  the  only  stops  being  for  one  or 
two  punctures. 

We  were  travelling  nearly  due  east,  entering  the  Val- 
ley of  the  Marne  by  way  of  the  high  road  to  Provins, 
where  we  were  to  spend  the  night,  and  traversing  one  of 
the  great  agricultural  sections  of  modern  France.  For 
the  first  afternoon's  run  we  were  not  in  the  military  zone 
proper  and  saw  few  convoys  or  soldiers,  but  what  we 
did  see  impressed  us  more  profoundly  with  the  strength 
of  France  than  any  military  spectacle  could  have  done. 
Every  inch  of  ground  as  far  as  the  eye  could  reach  for 
miles  and  miles  of  plains  and  gently  rolling  country  was 
under  cultivation,  the  intensive  cultivation  which  only  a 
few  farming  sections  in  America  can  show;  green  fields 
of  wheat  and  grain,  fruit  trees  in  flower,  farm  houses  in 
perfect  order,  huge  barns  and  granaries  bulging  with 
last  year's  yields ;  signs  of  plenty  at  the  present  moments, 
and  assurance  of  rich  harvests  for  the  coming  fall.  It 
is  true  that  there  were  not  so  many  men  in  the  fields  as 
in  normal  times,  but  old  men,  boys,  and  women  were 
working  everywhere,  and  we  were  told  that  at  planting 


AMERICAN   AMBULANCE    FIELD   SERVICE  / 

time  and  harvest  men  are  always  sent  back  in  sufficient 
numbers,  easily  spared  from  the  front,  to  help  in  the 
farm  work. 

On  we  went  for  miles  and  miles,  along  splendid  roads, 
lined  on  each  side  by  double  rows  of  shady  trees,  some- 
times through  green  wheatfields  shot  with  flaming  red 
poppies,  then  entering  forests  and  emerging  again  after 
a  few  miles  into  the  cultivated  fields. 

Late  in  the  afternoon  the  rain  passed  and  the  sun  ap- 
peared. Punctures  were  infrequent,  stops  were  few. 
Village  after  village  loomed  in  sight  and  then  disap- 
peared behind  us,  the  streets  always  filled  with  children 
waving  and  shouting  welcome  and  farewell — until  at 
length,  toward  twilight,  the  cathedral-crowned  hill  of 
Provins  came  into  sight. 

There  we  entered  the  military  zone  and  slept  for  the 
first  time  on  straw  pallets  in  a  caserne,  rolled  in  the 
blankets  provided  for  us  before  we  started,  and  which 
we  keep  as  our  personal  property  while  we  are  at  the 
front.    The  beds  were  hard,  but  sleep  was  sweet. 

Thursday  morning,  May  25,  we  were  up  and  away 
on  the  road  to  Chalon,  entering  further  into  the  Valley 
of  the  Marne,  travelling  the  very  road  on  which  German 
Uhlan  raiders  had  entered  France,  to  be  driven  back  in 
the  great  battle  that  saved  Paris  and  stopped  the  German 
advance  in  the  early  months  of  the  war. 

Soon  we  began  to  see  wooden  crosses  dotting  the 
field  by  the  roadside,  sometimes  a  single  grave,  sometimes 
a  cluster,  sometimes  a  field  full  of  them.  Each  cross  is 
made  from  an  upright  piece  of  pine  sapling  about  five 
feet  high,  with  a  cross  piece  of  the  same  wood  about 


8  DIARY   OF    SECTION   VIII 

three  feet  in  length,  the  bark  still  on  them,  and  the  name, 
when  there  is  a  name,  inscribed  on  a  small  plank  nailed 
to  the  centre.  Some  of  the  crosses  stood  over  barren 
mounds,  some  were  covered  with  flowers,  but  beneath 
them  all,  marked  or  nameless,  lie  men  who  died  to  save 
France.  May  their  sleep,  too,  be  sweet. 
*         *         * 

It  was  near  noon  of  the  same  day  that  we  entered  the 
outskirts  of  Chalon  and  stopped  in  a  suburb,  between 
high,  dust-covered  walls,  while  the  commandant  and  sec- 
tion chief  scouted  into  the  city  to  make  arrangements. 
In  half  an  hour  they  came  back  with  bread,  canned  meat, 
and  wine,  announcing  that  we  were  to  have  lunch  on  our 
cars  and  then  proceed  to  the  barracks.  By  this  time 
friendly  crowds  had  gathered  around  us  in  the  street, 
and  a  dear  little  old  lady,  with  white  hair  and  rosy  cheeks, 
came  out  of  her  house  on  the  corner  to  give  us  all  black 
coffee. 

An  hour  later  we  entered  the  gates  of  an  immense 
triangular  caserne  with  hundreds  of  other  cars  parked  in 
the  drill-ground,  and  became  a  part  of  the  French  army. 
Straw  mattresses  were  given  us,  each  man  shouldering 
his  mattress  and  carrying  it  to  a  second-story  room  in 
one  of  the  old  wings  of  the  caserne  which  had  once  been 
occupied  by  Napoleon's  men,  and  the  Russians  of  the 
present  war  had  left  their  record  on  the  walls,  the  sol- 
diers of  the  Little  Corporal  leaving  painted  inscriptions 
of  their  victories,  and  the  Russians  decorating  the  plas- 
ter walls  with  cartoons  and  silhouettes  of  camp  and  bar- 
racks life.  It  developed  toward  2  a.m.  that  former  ten- 
ants of  the  sleeping  quarters  had  left  other  and  more 


AMERICAN   AMBULANCE   FIELD   SERVICE  9 

intimateiy  personal  souvenirs,  and  before  the  night  was 
fully  over  half  of  our  section,  led  by  Chief  Mason  in 
person,  covered  from  head  to  foot  with  bites,  figured  in 
our  first  and  what  we  hope  will  be  our  only  retreat. 
They  spent  the  rest  of  the  night  in  their  cars,  itching  and 
scratching  and  waiting  for  the  dawn. 
*         *         * 

On  Friday,  May  26,  just  forty-eight  hours  after 
leaving  Paris,  we  arrived,  after  an  eventful  run  of 
twenty  kilometres  from  Chalon,  at  Mourmelon  le  Grand, 
a  village  situated  in  the  plains  of  Champagne,  about 
twenty-five  kilometres  southeast  of  Rheims,  and  about 
nine  kilometres  behind  the  trenches.  This  is  to  be  our 
headquarters  as  long  as  the  Sixth  Army  Corps,  of  which 
we  are  a  part,  remains  in  this  sector. 

Just  outside  the  village  is  a  long  avenue,  lined  on 
each  side  with  one-story  brick  and  stone  buildings,  con- 
structed especially  to  house  the  soldiers,  and  in  two  of 
these  structures  we  have  our  offices,  dining  room,  and 
sleeping  quarters.  Our  sleeping  room  is  a  long,  hall- 
like room  with  plaster  walls,  high  ceiling,  and  concrete 
floor.  It  was  absolutely  bare  when  we  entered  it.  We 
have  made  beds  by  elevating  stretchers  a  foot  or  two 
from  the  floor  on  wooden  supports,  and  have  driven 
nails  and  old  bayonets  into  the  wall  on  which  to  hang 
our  clothing  and  roosacks.  Old  benches  and  old  pieces 
of  matting  we  have  appropriated  until  the  place  is  reason- 
ably comfortable.  Our  cars  are  parked  in  a  line  at  right- 
angles  to  the  avenue,  backed  against  one  of  the  buildings. 

Mourmelon  le  Grand  is  in  itself  an  uninteresting  vil- 
lage.    Built  in  the  plain,  its  houses  are  ugly,  uniform, 


10  DIARY   OF   SECTION   VIII 

plastered  affairs,  laid  out  with  the  mathematical  regu- 
larity of  a  Kansas  prairie  town;  there  is  no  chateau,  no 
buildings  or  ruins  of  mediaeval  times,  and  the  church  is 
devoid  of  architectural  or  artistic  significance. 

But  all  that  Mourmelon  may  lack  in  intrinsic  interest 
is  more  than  made  up  for  by  proximity  to  the  front.  We 
hear  the  big  guns  booming,  and  on  a  quiet  night  can  even 
distinguish  the  popping  of  the  machine-guns  and  the 
rifles.  Observation  balloons  are  close  by,  and  nearly 
every  day  the  German  Fokkers  circle  over  our  heads,  ap- 
parently more  bent  on  observation  than  on  throwing 
bombs.  The  anti-aircraft  guns  hidden  in  every  direction 
in  the  fields  always  open  up  on  them,  and  it  is  a  beauti- 
ful sight  to  see  the  flash  of  fire  and  puff  of  white  smoke 
as  the  shrapnel  shells  explode  at  the  rate  of  sometimes  a 
dozen  a  minute  in  the  air  more  or  less  near  the  aviator. 

Sometimes  they  come  to  drop  bombs,  and  on  those 
occasions  every  man  is  ordered  to  hide  in  the  bomb- 
proofs,  or  at  least  get  within  doors  or  under  trees  where 
he  can't  be  seen.  When  the  aeroplanes  first  came  the 
soldiers  and  civilians  alike,  instead  of  being  afraid,  used 
to  crowd  into  the  streets  and  open  fields  to  see  the  sight, 
and  now,  to  keep  the  Germans  from  spotting  garrisoned 
villages  as  well  as  to  protect  life,  the  general  staff  has 
issued  an  order  punishing  with  fifteen  days  in  jail  any 
person  in  Mourmelon  who  is  so  careless  as  to  let  himself 
be  hit  by  an  aeroplane  bomb. 

On  Friday  night,  the  first  night  of  our  stay  here,  the 
Germans  tried  to  take  a  small  position  in  the  little  woods 
near  St.  Hilaire  named  "Y  Greque,"  and  for  a  short 
time  there  was  heavy  artillery  firing  from  the  French 


AMERICAN   AMBULANCE   FIELD   SERVICE  11 

guns.  As  darkness  came  on  we  not  only  heard  the 
booming  of  shells  and  the  rattle  of  machine-guns  but 
saw  the  whole  sky  in  the  direction  of  the  lines  illumined 
by  the  flares  and  rockets.  The  French  flares  go  high, 
are  fairly  bright,  and  last  a  comparatively  long  time, 
while  the  German  flares  go  not  quite  so  high,  flare 
noticeably  brighter  than  the  French,  and  go  out  much 
more  quickly.  It  was  to  the  tune  of  this  bombardment 
that  we  turned  in  for  our  first  night's  sleep  at  the  front. 
During  our  first  day  at  Mourmelon,  Friday,  May  26, 
none  of  the  men  went  out  on  duty.  Section-Chief  Mason 
and  Lieutenant  Commandant  Paroissien  made  a  trip  to 
the  front  to  inspect  the  pastes  de  secours  we  were  to 
handle,  to  look  over  the  roads,  and  to  make  the  acquaint- 
ance of  the  "Medicin  divisionaire." 
*         *         * 

On  Saturday,  May  27,  Section  8  received  its  bap- 
tism of  fire. 

Three  cars  were  called  to  St.  Hilaire,  our  evacuation 
post  eight  kilometres  from  Mourmelon  and  about  two 
and  a  half  kilometres  behind  the  first-line  trenches. 
Dodge,  Seabrook,  and  Shattuck  drove,  and  with  them 
went  lasigi,  Davison,  and  Section-Chief  Mason. 

St.  Hilaire,  a  village  which  has  changed  hands  sev- 
eral times  and  now  finds  itself  in  front  of  the  French 
batteries  in  easy  sight  and  range  of  the  German  guns 
on  the  slopes  opposite,  is  what  the  poilus  call  a  "mauvais 
coin." 

It  is  a  mass  of  ruins,  but  evidently  was  once  a  charm- 
ing spot,  and  the  approach  by  the  road  from  Mourmelon 
is  still  beautiful,  though  the  fields  on  both  sides  of  the 


12  DIARY   OF    SECTION   VIII 

route  are  scarred  with  bomb-craters  and  honeycombed 
with  abandoned  trenches.  For  practically  the  entire  dis- 
tance the  road  is  protected  from  German  observation 
by  a  screen  formed  of  pine  limbs  and  small  pine  saplings 
strung  on  wires  and  rising  well  over  the  top  of  the  tallest 
auto  truck. 

This  road  is  in  easy  distance  for  the  German  artil- 
lery, but  there  is  only  one  point  which  they  have  been 
shelling  during  the  past  month,  to  wit,  the  abandoned 
farm  of  St.  Hilaire,  three  kilometres  back  from  the 
village  and  now  nothing  more  than  an  abandoned  mass 
of  crumbled  masonry.  However,  no  shells  fell  as  we 
passed  the  farm,  and  in  another  five  minutes  we  turned 
a  curve  and  caught  our  first  sight  of  a  French  village 
totally  destroyed  by  heavy-artillery  fire.  The  approach 
is  through  a  grove,  over  a  lovely  little  stream  with  a 
picturesque  mill  at  the  left,  and  one  emerges  rather 
sharply  from  the  trees  into  full  view  of  the  town.  To 
one  who  had  never  before  seen  the  effect  of  heavy  high- 
explosive  shells  the  scene  was  appalling.  Some  among 
us  had  seen  big  floods,  fires,  tornados  and  railroad 
wrecks,  but  there  is  no  form  of  devastation  on  earth 
that  can  compare  to  a  town  deliberately  and  completely 
wrecked  by  continuous  artillery  fire.  On  one  side  of  the 
street  the  houses  were  blown  into  shapeless  masses;  the 
stone  was  not  only  scattered,  but  often  crumbled  into 
dust ;  the  iron  was  tortured  into  fantastic  shapes ;  the 
woodwork  was  ashes ;  on  the  opposite  side  were  wrecks 
of  houses  with  one  wall  or  one  triangular  corner  stand- 
ing; others  had  holes  blown  through  them  big  enough 
for  a  two-horse  team  to  drive  in,  yet  still  upright;  here 


AMERICAN    AMBULANCE    FIELD    SERVICE  13 

and  there  a  single  house  had  escaped  destruction,  but 
served  only  to  emphasize  the  devastation  around  it ;  the 
roof  of  the  church  is  gone,  one  half  of  the  nave  and 
entire  transept  is  crushed  in,  and  the  tower  is  tottering; 
it  was  as  if  the  huge  hand  of  some  demon  from  the 
clouds  had  lifted  the  entire  village  to  unthinkable  heights 
and  in  wanton  rage  dashed  it  back  to  earth. 

These  impressions  crowded  on  us  in  the  instant  that 
we  were  traversing  the  village  to  reach  the  entrance  to 
the  trenches  and  bombproof  shelters  in  which  the 
evacuation  postc  is  located.  The  entrance  is  immediately 
beside  the  road,  emerging  from  the  village  behind  a 
half-destroyed  house  that  furnishes  shelter  from  Bosche 
binoculars  if  not  from  their  big  guns.  The  sergeant  on 
duty  was  standing  in  the  road  at  the  entrance  to  his  dug- 
out, smoking  a  pipe,  and  half  a  dozen  of  his  stretcher- 
bearers  were  sitting  around  under  the  trees.  There  had 
been  little  if  any  firing  that  morning. 

They  told  us  they  had  several  "blesses"  (even  the 
Americans  and  English  call  them  that  in  France)  to  be 
transported  back  to  the  hospital  near  Mourmelon,  and 
we  made  ready  to  load  them  into  Dodge's  car. 

While  we  were  still  talking  a  German  shell,  and  then 
another,  and  still  another,  screamed  high  over  our  heads 
and  exploded  somewhere  in  the  woods  behind  St.  Hi- 
laire.  In  another  instant  the  French  batteries  located  a 
few  hundred  yards  behind  us  opened  up  a  terrific  bom- 
bardment, while  more  German  guns  joined  in  the  duel. 

The  fire  was  not  directed  at  St.  Hilaire.  The  enemy 
was  firing  just  over  our  heads  to  the  woods  300  and  400 
yards  behind  us,  "feeling"  for  the  batteries  they  knew 
were  masked  among  the  trees. 


14  DIARY   OF   SECTION   VIII 

"They  are  not  firing  at  us,"  explained  the  sergeant, 
"but  a  shell  timed  a  fraction  of  a  second  early,  or  fired  a 
fraction  of  a  centimetre  lower,  might  land  here  by  acci- 
dent, so  we  had  better  get  our  blesses  loaded  and  away." 

The  few  more  minutes  we  remained,  however,  were 
ample  to  furnish  experiences  we  shall  never  forget. 
Scarcely  had  the  sergeant  ceased  speaking  when  a  Ger- 
man shell  fell  far  short  of  its  mark  and  short  of  us,  too, 
in  the  field  beyond  St.  Hilaire ;  another  broke  to  the  right 
a  hundred  yards  or  so  above  our  heads,  and  a  third  and 
fourth  broke  so  close  that  the  fragments  sprayed  the 
road  where  we  were  standing.  One  of  our  party  picked 
up  a  jagged  piece  still  sizzling  hot  from  the  explosion. 
Then  the  Bosche  gunners  readjusted  their  range,  and 
the  shells  began  to  break  again,  as  they  intended,  in  the 
woods  behind. 

Descriptions  of  how  one  feels  under  shell  fire  are 
always  inadequate  and  malapropos,  because  every  man 
feels  differently.  Close  observation  of  the  men  of  our 
section  on  this  and  subsequent  occasions  seems  to  show 
that  they  are  alike  in  only  one  respect — they  all  hold 
their  ground.  For  instance,  there  is  one  of  us,  a  man 
of  unquestioned  courage,  who  "ducks"  his  head  and 
shoulders  every  time  a  shell  screams  over  his  head ;  it 
seems  to  be  an  involuntary  muscular  reaction.  Another 
becomes  garrulous,  laughing  loud  and  keeping  up  a  rapid 
fire  of  jokes,  possibly  like  the  negro  who  whistles  as  he 
traverses  a  graveyard.  Another  man  in  the  section  turns 
quite  pale,  yet  keeps  his  hand  and  voice  as  steady  and 
his  eye  as  clear  as  one  of  Napoleon's  grenadiers. 

It  may  possibly  all  be  summed  up  in  the  comment 


AMERICAN   AMBULANCE    FIELD   SERVICE  15 

often  made  in  other  wars  that  a  man  who  is  not  afraid 
of  a  big  shell  is  simply  a  fool,  and  that  courage  consists 
not  in  foolhardy  nonchalance,  but  in  standing  your 
ground  and  doing  your  duty. 

The  noise  of  an  artiller}-^  duel  has  been  described  by 
thousands  of  writers,  yet  it  comes  as  a  surprise  to  each 
man  who  hears  it  for  the  first  time.  The  crashing  re- 
ports of  the  French  soixante-quinze,  the  roar  of  the 
bigger  guns,  the  sharp  crack  of  the  small  shells,  and  the 
muffled  boom  of  the  exploding  bombs — all  these  can 
easily  be  reproduced  in  the  imagination,  by  simply  multi- 
plying the  din  of  any  practice  cannonading  you  may  have 
happened  to  hear  at  close  range  in  time  of  peace.  But 
what  nobody  can  describe  is  the  shrieking  and  screaming 
of  the  shells  as  they  fly  through  the  air  over  your  head 
before  bursting.  It  cannot  be  described,  because  there  is 
no  sound  with  which  it  can  be  compared.  It  is  a  sound 
which  has  no  place  in  things  human — a  shrieking,  cre- 
scendo scream  from  the  shells  that  are  arriving — the  last 
diminishing  wail  of  a  lost  soul  from  the  shells  as  they 
depart — all  mingled  at  times  in  an  ear-splitting,  high- 
keyed  symphony  of  hell  in  which  the  bursting  bombs 
and  rumbling  guns  furnish  the  deep  bass  tones. 

Well,  after  all,  they  weren't  firing  directly  at  us,  and 

we  all  got  back  to  Mourmelon. 

*         *         * 

But  for  some  of  us  the  day  had  only  begun. 

On  beyond  St.  Hilaire,  two  kilometres  further  in 
the  barren  land  between  the  batteries  and  the  first  line 
infantry  trenches,  deep  in  the  bowels  of  the  earth  is  the 
furthest  paste  de  secours,  St.  Souplet.    From  that  lonely 


16  DIARY   OF    SECTION    VIII 

shelter  the  French  "brancardiers"  wind  their  way 
through  the  labyrinth  that  leads  to  the  line  and  bring 
back  the  wounded  on  stretchers.  It  was  from  this  post 
that  there  came  a  call  in  the  late  afternoon. 

Keogh  was  sent  with  his  car,  and  riding  with  him 
were  sent  Thomas  and  Seabrook. 

The  cannonading  had  ceased  as  they  went  through 
St.  Hilaire,  and  only  an  occasional  far-distant  shot  broke 
the  silence  as  they  left  the  ruins  behind  and  entered  the 
barren  fields.  All  was  dead  level  except  the  screen  at 
the  left  of  the  road.  The  fields  were  bare  and  stony, 
pock-marked  with  shell-craters,  seamed  with  connecting 
ditches  to  and  from  the  trenches.  The  grass  was  sear 
and  withered  from  continued  gas  attacks,  yet  here  and 
there  a  flame-red  poppy  survived — "les  fleurs  des  tran- 
che es,"  which,  many  a  soldier  has  sent  back  from  the  brink 
of  death  to  the  wife  or  sweetheart  who  is  still  waiting 
for  the  letter  which  will  never  come. 

Two  kilometres  of  flatness  and  desolation,  and  a 
small,  painted  board  stuck  a  couple  of  feet  out  of  a 
trench  entrance  informed  us  that  we  had  arrived. 

We  left  the  car  in  the  road  behind  the  screen,  possi- 
bly seventy-five  yards  from  the  entrance  to  the  paste, 
which  is  in  the  field  to  the  right. 

Thomas  and  Seabrook  went  to  the  paste,  while  Keogh 
remained  at  his  car  to  do  a  moment's  work  on  the  en- 
gine. All  was  quiet,  and  the  brancardiers,  emerged  from 
the  trenches,  were  smoking  their  pipes  and  watching  the 
sun  set  behind  the  German  lines,  plainly  visible  on  the 
hills  beyond. 

It  turned  out  that  there  were  more  blesses  than  one 


AMERICAN    AMBULANCE    FIELD   SERVICE  17 

car  could  carry ;  but  some  of  them  could  sit  up,  and  it 
was  decided  to  crowd  as  many  of  them  on  the  car  as 
possible,  leaving  Seabrook  at  the  poste  until  another  car 
could  be  sent  out. 

One  of  the  more  badly  wounded  men  was  carried  to 
the  car,  and  the  others  were  to  walk  to  it.  The  brancar- 
diers  were  short  of  stretchers  and  asked  Seabrook  to 
go  and  help  Keogh  open  the  two  stretchers  which  were 
folded  in  the  car. 

As  Keogh  and  Seabrook  were  unloading  the  stretch- 
ers to  open  them  on  the  ground  a  German  "77"  broke  in 
the  field  to  the  right,  more  than  two  hundred  yards  dis- 
tant. It  seemed  to  be  a  stray  shell  from  out  of  the 
silence,  dropped  there  by  hazard.  But  in  an  instant  an- 
other dropped  within  a  hundred  yards,  and  then  they 
began  to  come  thick  and  fast. 

They  were  shelling  the  poste. 

One  of  the  stretchers  was  jammed  and  wouldn't  open. 
The  shells  were  exploding  in  the  air  and  on  the  ground 
from  thirty  to  fifty  feet  from  the  car  and  the  fragments 
were  whizzing  in  all  directions.  The  two  men  were 
crouching  flat  on  the  ground,  still  working  with  the 
stretcher,  and  finally  got  it  opened  and  in  place.  They 
yelled  back  to  the  poste,  and  two  stretcher-bearers  start- 
ed to  the  car  carrying  those  who  were  the  most  seriously 
wounded.  They  seemed  a  long  time  getting  there. 
Thomas,  who  was  aiding  the  other  wounded  to  walk  from 
the  trench  to  the  car,  says  that  when  a  shell  broke  over 
the  stretcher-bearers'  heads  they  dropped  the  stretcher 
to  the  ground  and  ran  back  to  the  shelter  of  the  trench, 
leaving  the  wounded  man  for  a  moment,  but  returning 


18  DIARY    OF   SECTION   VIII 

to  him  a  moment  afterward  and  carrying  him  to  the 
car. 

The  car  was  loaded  and  got  away  safely,  with  Keogh 
driving,  Thomas  on  the  seat  with  him,  and  Seabrook 
going  back  across  the  field  to  the  post  to  wait  for  the 
next  car  as  had  been  previously  arranged. 

The  shelling  continued,  and  all  the  remaining  men 
entered  the  bomb-proof  dug-out,  which  a  "yj"  shell 
couldn't  have  penetrated  even  if  it  had  landed  squarely 
on  top. 

It  was  then  about  6.30  p.m. 

For  an  hour  the  shells  continued  to  come,  breaking 
over  and  around  the  poste,  raining  many  splinters  and 
small  fragments  near  the  dug-out  entrance. 

About  dark  the  firing  ceased. 

Five  minutes  afterward  the  French  green  flares  went 
up,  announcing  a  German  gas  attack. 

It  turned  out  that  the  gas  was  from  asphyxiating 
bombs,  but  the  men  were  compelled  to  keep  their  masks 
on  for  about  an  hour.  The  gas  was  not  very  heavy,  and 
every  little  while  a  brancardier  would  loosen  his  mask, 
put  his  nose  at  the  door  for  an  instant  and  then  quickly 
readjust  his  mask  again. 

"Ca  pique  encore,"  he  would  whisper,  and  all  would 
settle  down  to  another  fifteen  minutes'  waiting  in  the 
stuffy  gloom  of  the  underground  cave. 

Finally  the  man  at  the  door  lifted  his  mask  a  little, 
then  tore  it  from  his  face  with  a  sigh  of  relief  and  ex- 
claimed, "Ca  ne  pique  plus." 

In  the  meantime  the  shelling  had  been  resumed,  but 
was    intermittent    and    seemed    to    be    directed     further 


AMERICAN    AMBULANCE    FIELD    SERVICE  19 

toward  the  right,  though  occasional  shells  still  fell  near 
the  poste. 

In  addition  to  the  blesses  already  in  need  of  attention, 
other  brancardiers  brought  in  an  artilleryman  who 
had  been  struck  squarely  in  the  face  with  a  piece  of  shell 
casing,  and  was  in  a  frightful  condition.  He  had  a 
chance  to  live,  they  said,  if  he  were  taken  to  the  hospital 
in  time. 

By  that  time  it  was  nearly  ten  o'clock. 

The  expected  second  car  had  not  come — blocked,  it 
turned  out  afterward,  by  a  combination  of  engine  trouble 
and  a  misunderstanding  about  where  it  was  needed.  The 
'phone  wires  were  down. 

Seabrook  went  to  awaken  the  sergeant  of  the  poste, 
who  was  in  another  dug-out  a  hundred  yards  away,  and 
asked  if  it  would  be  best  to  go  back  on  foot  to  St.  Hi- 
laire  to  get  an  ambulance. 

"If  you  are  willing,  I  will  give  you  a  hand-cart  and  a 
brancardier  to  help  you,  and  you  can  take  the  wounded 
man  in  the  cart  to  St.  Hil^re,  where  you  will  probably 
find  one  of  your  cars  stationed,"  responded  the  sous- 
officier,  "and  that  will  be  quicker." 

So  they  swung  the  wounded  artilleryman  on  his 
stretcher  between  the  two  wheels  of  the  "poussette"  or 
hand-cart,  and,  with  three  other  wounded  men  stagger- 
ing behind,  started  in  melancholy  procession  on  foot  for 
St.  Hilaire. 

Flares  and  rockets  were  still  illuminating  the  sky 
along  the  trenches  behind ;  a  slight  stench  of  gas  was 
still  in  the  air.  Sometimes  the  road  was  in  darkness, 
sometimes  lighted  by  the  glare.  Occasionally  shells 
shrieked  overhead. 


20  DIARY    OF    SECTION   VlII 

The  three  wounded  men  fell  behind,  too  weak  to  keep 
pace  with  the  cart,  and  often  it  had  to  stop  and  wait  for 
them  to  catch  up. 

The  wounded  artilleryman  could  neither  speak  nor 
see,  but  was  conscious  and  could  understand  what  was 
said  to  him.  The  road  was  rough,  and  his  moans  were 
piteous ;  when  the  cart  stopped  for  a  moment,  he  seemed 
to  be  pleading  for  something,  but  there  was  nothing  to 
do  but  go  on. 

At  St.  Hilaire  they  found  Rogers  on  duty  with  his 
car,  and  the  four  wounded  men  were  transported  back 
to  the  hospital,  with  the  artilleryman  still  alive. 
*         *         * 

Calm  follows  storm  on  an  artillery  front,  and  on  one 
of  the  quiet  mornings  an  officer  consented  to  show  us 
the  batteries  in  the  woods  behind  the  evacuation  post. 
Though  many  of  the  guns  were  quite  close  by  they  were 
so  skilfully  screened  by  trees  and  brush-heaps,  that  we 
could  never  have  found  them  without  a  guide. 

Birds  were  singing,  the  trees  were  glistening  from  a 
flurry  of  rain;  the  sun  was  again  breaking  through  the 
leaves  around  the  silent  monsters  of  destruction  that 
yesterday  had  been. 

We  surprised  the  lieutenant  of  the  nearest  battery, 
engaged,  like  Candide,  in  cultivating  his  garden.  He  had 
cleared  a  tiny  spot,  a  few  yards  wide,  facing  the  en- 
trance to  his  bombproof  dug-out,  and  had  planted  lettuce 
and  radishes,  with  rows  of  flowers  between  the  vegetable 
beds.  He  had  even  built  a  little  wooden  bench  where  he 
could  sit  and  smoke  his  pipe  and  dream  of  his  real  vege- 
table garden  in  Provence — for  he  was  a  son  of  the  Midi. 


AMERICAN    AMBULANCE    FIELD    SERVICE  21 

One  of  his  men  was  darning  socks ;  another  was  mend- 
ing a  shirt ;  a  boy,  who  looked  scarcely  more  than  twenty, 
was  amusing  himself  tossing  chunks  of  bread  to  a  puppy ; 
others  were  reading  books  or  laughing  over  last  week's 
funny  papers  from  Paris. 

"So  you  find  an  opportunity  to  enjoy  life  even  here," 
one  of  us  said  to  a  grizzled  veteran,  and,  with  a  smile 
that  was  half  sigh,  he  responded : 

"Mais  il  le  faiit.    On  est  tue  si  vite." 

Returning  to  the  dug-out  at  the  evacuation  post,  two 
of  us  were  invited  to  remain  for  luncheon,  a  "dejeuner 
dans  les  tranchecs."  The  dining  room,  a  cave  six  feet 
under  ground,  presented  a  strange  combination  of  luxury 
and  dirt.  On  the  wall  hung  a  stained  Louis  Quinze 
mirror  in  a  tarnished  gold  frame ;  a  tapestried  arm- 
chair, mud-stained  and  with  one  leg  replaced  by  a  pine 
board,  was  at  the  head  of  a  plank  table  blackened  with 
grease  and  smoke.  There  was  a  bottle  of  champagne, 
but  the  cups  and  plates  were  of  battered  tin.  The  place 
was  lighted  by  a  four-wicked  gasoline  lamp  suspended 
from  the  ceiling.  It  looked  like  a  relic  of  the  Roman 
catacombs,  but,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  had  been  ingeniously 
made  by  inserting  four  German  rifle-cartridge  shells 
horizontally  into  the  sides  of  a  small  tin  bucket  which  had 
contained  marmalade.  One  of  us  carries  the  lamp  back 
to  America  as  a  gift-souvenir. 

The  attention  of  our  host  was  somewhat  divided 
between  us  and  a  cat  who  was  nursing  her  kittens  on 
the  straw  in  a  corner.  The  tiniest  kitten,  christened 
"Microbe,"  was  brought  to  the  table  and  introduced  to 
the  visitors. 


22  DIARY   OF   SECTION    VIII 

"The  old  cat  is  a  wise  one,"  they  told  us,  "and  knows 
every  ruse  of  the  trenches.  You  will  see  her  on  the  roof 
in  the  sunshine  after  dinner.  She  only  blinks  her  eyes 
for  our  soixante-quinze  shells  no  matter  how  hot  and  fast 
they  are  flying — she  knows  the  sound — but  when  the 
Bosches  begin  to  reply  she  is  back  underground  quicker 
than  any  of  us." 

"They  do  not  often  send  anything  bigger  than  the 
*150'  high  explosives  in  our  direction,"  continued  the 
speaker,  "but  let  me  show  you  where  we  all  go  on  the 
few  occasions  when  the  marmites  are  dropping." 

"Marmite"  is  the  name  they  reserve  for  the  huge 
Krupp  shells,  the  "Jack  Johnsons"  that  make  a  hole  in 
the  ground  as  big  as  a  two-story  house. 

They  led  us  by  a  winding  underground  passage  to  an 
inky-black  cave,  the  roof  of  which  had  thirty  feet  of  solid 
virgin  earth  between  it  and  daylight.  We  were  groping 
along  the  wall  while  the  sous-officier  was  feeling  for  his 
matches,  when  an  agonized  screech  rent  the  darkness. 
Our  guide  gave  vent  to  a  frightened  grunt  and  leaped 
back  as  if  bitten  by  a  snake.  He  had  planted  his  foot 
squarely  in  the  stomach  of  a  sleeping  stretcher-bearer. 

"Diantre!  I  thought  I  had  received  a  marmite  in  the 
belly,"  he  grumbled,  and  rolled  over  to  sleep  again. 

On  May  30  and  31,  the  sky  overcast  with  clouds,  and 
rains  frequent,  they  began  to  move  the  Sixth  Army  Corps 
(of  which  we  are  a  part)  away  from  the  Mourmelon 
sector,  replacing  it  with  fresh  troops  who  came  tramp- 
ing and  rolling  through  the  village  by  the  thousands,  on 
foot  and  in  auto  trucks,   while  the  men  and  machine- 


AMERICAN    AMBULANCE    FIELD   SERVICE  23 

guns  of  our  corps  departed,  mud-stained  and  weary,  for 
eight  days  of  repose  in  villages  behind  the  lines,  prepar- 
atory to  being  sent — to  Verdun  some  say,  to  La  Somme 
say  others. 

We  expected  our  section  to  be  moved  on  the  morning 
of  June  1,  but  on  the  afternoon  of  May  31  the  sun  came 
out,  the  sky  cleared,  a  number  of  Bosche  planes  flew 
over  Mourmelon  and  got  safely  back  to  their  lines — 
and  from  our  general  staff  came  word  that  no  more 
troops  could  move  by  daylight.  Soon  after,  a  formal 
order  came  to  our  section  instructing  us  to  leave  Mour- 
melon at  2  a.m.  and  repair  to  the  stable  and  backyard 
of  the  Widow  Cueux,  in  the  village  of  La  Veuve,  where 
we  had  been  billeted. 

We  filed  out  of  Mourmelon  in  the  darkness,  run- 
ning without  lights,  but  by  two-thirty  the  dawn  was  red 
(so  much  further  north  is  France  than  our  United 
States),  and  it  was  broad  daylight  at  3  a.m.  when  we 
reached  La  Veuve,  turned  down  a  narrow  side  street, 
found  the  Widow  Cueux's,  parked  our  cars  under  the 
sycamore  trees  in  a  yard  that  extends  into  the  open  fields, 
and  had  our  breakfast  of  black  coffee,  army  bread,  cheese 
and  marmalade,  after  which  we  rolled  into  our  cars, 
wrapped  in  blankets,  to  nap  until  lunch-time. 

June  2.  It  is  not  because  we  are  tired,  but  simply 
because  we  belong  to  the  Sixth  Army  Corps  that  we  find 
ourselves  ''en  repos."  We  are  now  an  integral  part  of 
the  corps,  and  where  it  goes  we  go.  In  the  meantime, 
La  Veuve  is  not  such  a  bad  place  for  a  prolonged  picnic. 

It  is  true  that  the  village  is  squalid ;  it  is  also  true 


24  DIARY    OF    SECTION    VIII 

that  the  mayor  had  to  order  the  removal  of  huge  quan- 
tities of  stable  manure  from  the  Widow  Cueux's  prem- 
ises before  its  barndoors  opened  to  receive  us;  it  is  true 
that  a  score  of  our  own  huskiest  lads  had  to  work  with 
shovel  and  wheelbarrow  to  make  the  yard  habitable — but 
the  squalor  of  La  Veuve  has  its  picturesque  qualities ; 
the  green  fields  are  beyond,  and  even  barnyard  smells, 
when  mingled  with  the  fresh  sweetness  of  field  flowers 
and  grass,  have  certain  rustic  charm,  as  Virgil  said  in  his 
Bucolics,  reminiscent  of  childhood  summers  long  ago. 

The  sound  of  guns  is  faint  and  far  away.  The  old 
widow  sits  at  her  door  and  watches  us  pitch  our  awn- 
ings and  build  our  rough  benches  and  tables  under  the 
trees.  She  went  through  similar  experiences  under  these 
same  trees  during  the  Franco-Prussian  war,  nearly  half 
a  century  ago,  and  takes  our  presence  philosophically, 
as  long  as  we  let  her  eggs  and  chickens  alone. 

None  of  us  had  cared  to  bunk  in  the  barn.  We  sleep 
in  our  ambulances,  on  stretchers  covered  by  blankets. 

The  poilus  of  the  Sixth  Corps,  after  months  in  the 
trenches,  are  spending  eight  days  of  repose,  billeted 
here  in  La  Veuve  and  in  neighboring  villages  and  farm- 
houses. They  are  revelling  in  the  running  water,  green 
grass,  wild  flowers,  shade  and  sunshine,  denied  them  so 
long.  Their  greatest  pleasure  is  to  lie  in  groups  in  the 
grass  on  some  hillside,  recalling  dangers  past  and  vic- 
tories won.  Hearing  them  talk,  we  learn  more  than  in 
any  other  way,  for  they  have  been  through  experiences 
that  make  our  exciting  times  seem  tame  enough. 

This  morning  they  introduced  us  to  the  corporal  who 
has  "sixteen  bullets  in  his  blanket,  but  not  a  scratch  on 
his  skin." 


AMERICAN    AMBULANCE   FIELD   SERVICE  25 

He  proudly  exhibited  the  blanket,  and  told  us  how 
the  poilus,  when  all  patent  armor  devices  and  bullet- 
proof jackets  had  failed  to  deflect  the  German  rifle  fire, 
had  themselves  invented,  or  rather  discovered,  the  one 
known  buflfer  that  no  rifle  bullet  can  pierce. 

They  take  their  own  heavy  sleeping  blankets,  soak 
them  in  water,  and  then  roll  two  or  three  of  them  in  a 
tight  wad,  sometimes  putting  their  knapsack  in  the  centre 
of  the  roll  to  make  it  thicker.  Crawling  along  on  their 
bellies,  pushing  the  wad  of  blankets  foot  by  foot  in  front 
of  them,  it  affords  just  enough  cover  to  protect  them 
from  horizontal  rifle  fire. 

The  high-velocity  bullets,  which  neither  wood  nor 
steel  can  turn,  sink  into  the  soft,  soggy,  woolen  roll  and 
die  there,  harmless  as  eggs  in  a  nest. 

Many  another  trick  the  poilus  have  learned  to  save 
their  skins,  but  none  so  efficient  as  the  roll  of  wet  blan- 
kets. 

*         *         * 

Conversation  with  the  private  soldiers  here  furnishes 
convincing  evidence  that  the  Germans  lost  more  than 
they  gained  when  they  resorted  to  the  deadly  gas  attacks 
and  liquid  fire.  In  the  earlier  stages  of  the  war,  the 
French  peasant  Pierre  had  a  sort  of  good-natured, 
scornful  sympathy  for  the  German  peasant  Fritz,  and 
occasional  true  stories  filtered  from  the  front  of  ex- 
changes of  friendly  words  and  tobacco  between  the  op- 
posing first-line  trenches.  At  that  period,  the  appeal  of 
"Camarade"  stopped  many  a  French  bayonet  as  it  was 
about  to  sink  into  a  German  breast.  But  that  period 
has  passed.    It  ended  with  the  gas  attacks. 


26  DIARY   OF   SECTION   VIII 

"Plus  de  camarades"  is  an  expression  we  hear  every- 
where, and  the  word  Bosche,  expressive  merely  of  con- 
tempt, has  given  place  to  "les  vaches"  or  "les  sales 
vaches,"  which  means  "cows"  in  the  dictionary,  but 
"dirty  beasts"  in  the  argot  of  the  trenches. 

Today  each  French  poilu  is  fighting  his  own  war, 
fighting  with  a  bitter  hatred ;  fighting  to  kill. 
*         *         * 

Section  8  wants  a  dog — a  police  dog  if  we  can  get  him, 
but  any  dog  will  do.  Every  company  in  "repos"  around 
us  has  its  canine  mascot  who  shared  their  life  in  the 
trenches  and  whom  they  regard  as  their  comrade-in- 
arms. 

A  lieutenant  of  infantry  quartered  near  us  has  a 
collie  which  survived  a  gas  attack  in  a  remarkable  way 
the  week  before  we  arrived  at  St.  Hilaire. 

"The  gas  attack  came  very  suddenly,  as  it  often 
does,"  said  the  officer,  "and  some  of  our  men  who  were 
not  quick  enough  in  adjusting  their  masks  are  now 
dying  in  the  hospital.  I  was  lucky  enough  to  get  mine 
on  quickly,  and  for  little  Pom,  pauvre  chien,  there  was 
no  mask.  I  tried  to  wrap  his  head  in  my  overcoat,  but 
he  struggled  out  of  my  arms  and,  with  the  instinct  which 
the  bon  Dieu  gives  animals,  buried  his  nose  deep  in  the 
mud.  We  watched  his  scratching  with  his  little  paws 
and  pushing  his  muzzle  deeper,  while  we  wondered  if  it 
was  any  use.  And  that  is  how  he  is  still  with  us,  taking 
his  repose  and  enjoying  his  nap  in  the  grass.  Viens, 
Pom.  You  see,  monsieur,  how  well  he  carries  himself; 
only  he  still  coughs  a  little — curse  the  dirty  German 
beasts !" 


AMERICAN   AMBULANCE   FIELD   SERVICE  27 

In  all  the  stories  of  the  trenches  we  hear  this  same 
inextinguishable  hatred  of  the  enemy.  If  it  be  true,  as 
some  tactician  has  said,  that  one  must  hate  to  fight  eflfec- 
tively,  the  individual  French  soldier  has  become  the  most 
dangerous  fighting  machine  in  history.  It  is  not  merely 
a  matter  of  charging  vaHantly  under  orders  and  carrying 
trenches  when  ordered  to  do  so ;  it  has  become  a  personal 
matter  with  the  poilus;  each  individual  is  out  to  kill. 
There  has  been  no  brutality  on  the  part  of  the  French 
toward  German  prisoners  or  German  wounded — but  be- 
yond that  there  is  no  mercy. 

A  certain  lieutenant  of  infantry  named  E —  R —  told 
us  the  following  characteristic  incident  of  a  sector  where 
gas  and  liquid  fire  had  been  employed  with  cruel  eflfect. 

"I  was  making  my  round  of  inspection  on  the  first 
line,  Sunday  morning  two  weeks  ago.  You  will  recall 
there  was  no  fighting  on  that  day.  It  was  good  to  be 
alive.  Birds  were  singing,  the  sun  was  shining,  the 
muguet  was  blooming  in  the  very  shell-craters.  Church- 
bells  were  ringing  in  a  distant  village. 

"I  had  just  entered  a  lookout  post  in  the  first-line 
trenches  when  the  man  at  the  peep-hole  turned  and 
whisnered  to  his  comrades: 

"  *  'Shh,  voila  un  Boche.' 

"'Where?' 

"There  he  was  in  the  German  parapet,  scarcely  fifty 
yards  away,  his  head  and  shoulders  in  full  view — a  good- 
looking  peasant  boy,  with  ruddy  complexion,  curly  light 
hair  and  blue  eyes.  He  had  forgotten  war.  He  was  not 
even  looking  in  our  direction.  His  half-turned  face  was 
transfigured  by  the  peace  and  beauty  of  the  sun-lit  fields 


28  DIARY    OF   SECTION   VIII 

and  he  was  breathing  deep  of  the  morning  air.  His  body 
was  swaying  sHghtly  and  he  seemed  to  be  humming  some 
folk-song  of  ow^r^-Rhine. 

"But  while  I  was  looking  the  poilus  had  sent  for 
Pecou,  who  climbed  heavily  but  silently  to  the  observa- 
tion-post at  my  side.  Pecou  is  a  huge  peasant  from 
Normandie,  slow  of  speech,  with  enormous  hands  and 
little  eyes  the  color  of  steel. 

"  'Where  is  he  ?'  whispers  Pecou. 

"  'Straight  before  you,'  answers  a  comrade  behind 
him. 

"Pecou  does  not  respond,  he  merely  reaches  back- 
ward with  his  huge  hand  and  someone  passes  him  a 
loaded  rifle. 

"The  rifle  cracks. 

"  'Kamarad,  Kapout,'  grunts  Pecou,  and  placidly  de- 
scends. 

^'Eh,  bien,  my  friends  from  America,  there  are  four 
million  Pecous  in  France.  These  are  not  the  same  men 
who  swapped  tobacco  for  sausages  between  battles  two 
years  ago.  Perhaps  you  will  not  understand  Pecou,  but 
perhaps  you  have  never  seen  a  comrade  dying  with  his 
lungs  full  of  gas." 

*         *         * 

June  10.  Our  ten  days  in  La  Veuve,  with  the  sol- 
diers of  our  division  quartered  here  and  in  neighboring 
villages,  have  given  us  a  splendid  opportunity  to  take 
stock  of  ourselves  and  also  to  learn  something  of  the 
men  with  whom  we  will  be  associated  for  the  next  few 
months.  We  are  the  official  ambulance  section  of  the 
Twelfth  Division  of  the  Sixth  Corps  of  the  Fourth  Army. 


AMERICAN   AMBULANCE    FIELD    SERVICE  29 

Our  division  is  composed  of  four  regiments  of  about 
3,000  each,  totalling  in  all  some  12,000  men.  We  are  as 
much  a  part  of  the  division  as  if  we  were  all  born 
Frenchmen.  Our  rations  are  furnished  by  the  army ;  we 
are  under  army  regulations ;  billeted  in  our  sleeping 
quarters  by  the  army ;  each  of  us  receives  five  sous  per 
day,  the  regular  pay  of  the  poilu,  and  each  of  us  receives 
his  army  ration  of  pipe  tobacco  every  ten  days. 

Back  in  Paris  the  American  Ambulance  furnishes  us 
a  list  of  the  things  we  are  expected  to  take  with  us  in  the 
field,  the  list  which  has  been  published  in  America.  It 
includes  warm  clothing,  underwear,  felt  slippers,  socks, 
shaving  materials,  and  other  personal  paraphernalia — a 
good,  practical  list  of  useful  and  necessary  things.  Before 
we  left  Paris,  the  field  section  office  added  to  it,  rolls  of 
blankets,  mess-kits,  cantines — but  the  tout  ensemble  of 
our  equipment  when  we  left  Paris  would  have  been  as 
appropriate  for  a  hard  auto-camping  trip  across  the 
American  continent  in  time  of  peace  as  it  is  for  our 
present  purposes  here. 

On  the  first  day  of  our  arrival  at  the  front,  the  army, 
however,  added  two  items  for  each  of  us,  more  im- 
portant than  all  the  rest,  viz. : 

One  regulation  steel  helmet. 

One  regulation  gas  mask. 

So  here  we  are,  poilus  and  comrades  like  the  rest,  by 
these  two  tokens,  and  by  the  aluminum  numbered  identi- 
fication tag  which  we  wear  on  a  chain  around  our  wrist. 

Like  the  rest,  but  luckier  than  the  rest — for  the 
American  Ambulance  seems  followed  always  by  a  lucl<y 
star.     On  yesterday  we  learned  that  two  days  after  we 


30  DIARY   OF   SECTION   VIII 

left  Mourmelon,  a  German  aeroplane  bomb  fell  beside 
the  caserne  where  we  had  been  parked,  wounding  five 
of  the  French  Ambulance  drivers  in  the  section  which 
had  taken  our  place. 

Our  Twelfth  Division  has  a  new  commander,  General 
Giraudon,  who  was  presented  in  a  formal  review  on 
Wednesday,  June  7,  held  in  a  vast  field  three  kilometres 
north  of  the  village — a  spectacle  which  differed  in  no 
particular  from  any  banal  military  pageant  at  home,  ex- 
cept as  we  remembered  what  these  had  gone  through 
and  what  they  would  have  to  face  again.  The  regiment 
which  we  have  learned  to  know  best  is  the  67th,  as  it  is 
quartered  in  La  Veuve.  It  has  been  one  of  the  hardest 
hit  by  the  war ;  thirty  thousand  men  have  passed  through 
it  during  the  past  sixteen  months.  As  they  marched  by 
in  closed  ranks,  with  band  playing  and  colors  flying,  we 
could  recognize  many  faces  of  new-made  friends.  How 
many  of  them,  we  wonder,  will  be  left  la-has  in  the  next 
attack;  how  many  will  be  brought  back  bleeding  and 
broken  in  our  "belles  petites  voitures,"  which  they  have 
gathered  around  so  often  in  the  evening  to  admire. 

We  were  merely  spectators  in  the  review.  An  hour 
later  the  General  left  his  limousine,  left  his  prancing 
steed  as  well,  left  his  general  staff,  and  came  down  the 
alley  on  foot  through  the  mud  to  our  barnyard,  accom- 
panied only  by  an  orderly,  to  "review"  his  new  "section 
sanitaire." 

As  we  are  all  under  military  regulations,  we  scarcely 
dared  to  blink  an  eyelid  as  we  stood  stiffly  beside  our 
cars  on  his  arrival. 


AMERICAN    AMBULANCE   FIELD   SERVICE  31 

The  General  walked  along  the  line  and  stopped  before 
Boyd.  We  had  been  given  our  instructions  to  stand  at 
attention  and  not  salute  while  under  inspection,  so  Boyd 
stood  like  a  statue,  until  it  became  unmistakably  evident 
that  the  General  intended  speaking  to  him.  Boyd's  hand 
then  started  toward  his  cap  in  a  salute  that  was  never 
finished.  Those  of  us  up  the  line  never  will  know 
exactly  what  happened  in  that  embarrassing  half -second, 
but  an  instant  later  the  General  and  Boyd  were  shaking 
hands  in  good  American  fashion,  while  words  escaped 
Boyd's  lips  which  sounded  suspiciously  like  "How  are 
you?" 

The  ice  was  broken,  and  when  the  General  left  he 
told  us  he  was  proud  to  have  an  American  section  in  his 
division. 

Our  only  duties  while  en  repos  at  La  Veuve  have 
been  to  transport  occasional  sick  men  in  the  division 
from  their  temporary  barracks  or  from  our  field  hos- 
pital to  other  hospitals  in  the  neighborhood.  The  only 
excitement  we  have  had  since  leaving  Mourmelon  was 
the  trip  Keogh,  Forbush,  lasigi,  McKee,  and  Crocker 
made  with  their  cars  to  La  Suippe,  carrying  division 
officers  to  the  school  there  where  they  are  being  taught 
to  fly  carrier-pigeons.  The  pigeons  are  used  when  tele- 
phone wires  are  down.  It  happened  that  the  Germans 
decided  to  bombard  Suippe  that  morning,  and  our  men, 
who  stationed  their  cars  on  a  hill  about  a  kilometre  from 
the  town,  witnessed  the  remarkable  spectacle  of  bombs 
bursting  among  the  buildings,  and  houses  in  flames. 

Most  of  our  time  here,  however,  has  been  spent  off 
duty,  exchanging  visits  and  souvenirs  with  the  poilus  of 


32  DIARY   OF    SECTION   VIII 

the  67th.  They  bring  us  mementoes  of  the  trenches, 
brass  and  aluminum  time-fuses  from  the  German  shells, 
cigar-lighters  made  from  flare  cartridges,  occasionally  a 
button  or  cantine  or  hat-band  stamped  with  the  Hohen- 
zollern  eagles.  Often  they  entertain  us  with  wrestling 
and  boxing  matches  and  association- football  games  in 
the  field  facing  our  cars,  and  one  evening  we  paired  off 
a  number  of  matches  with  the  gloves  among  the  men  of 
our  section,  to  the  great  delight  of  the  Frenchmen. 

Our  poilu  friends  have  been  very  much  taken  with 
the  American  songs,  and  every  evening  they  gather  in  a 
ring  before  the  cars  to  hear  Armour,  Jacobs,  and  the 
other  musical  members  of  the  section  singing  to  the  ac- 
companiment of  mandolin  and  guitars.  One  night  they 
decided  it  would  be  appropriate  for  them  to  exchange 
courtesies,  and  they  invited  the  section  to  the  sleeping- 
quarters  of  one  of  the  companies  in  a  neighboring  barn, 
where  wine  and  cakes  were  served  al  fresco  in  the  straw. 

While  ninety  per  cent  of  the  French  troops  are  made 
up  of  simple-minded  peasant  farmers  and  workmen,  we 
are  also  making  the  acquaintance  of  many  men  of  dif- 
ferent type  among  them. 

Davison  recently  "discovered"  among  the  stretcher- 
bearers  a  well-known  Parisian  painter,  Cardinal-Kolsky, 
who  has  had  more  than  one  canvas  in  the  Salon,  and  who 
has  kept  his  brushes  and  tubes  with  him  in  the  trenches 
for  the  past  fourteen  months.  He  painted  a  portrait  of 
Davison,  seated  in  the  twilight  in  front  of  a  barn  door, 
and,  on  finding  it  greatly  appreciated  and  admired  by 
us  all,  has  had  the  kindness  to  paint  similar  portraits  for 
other  members  of  the  section. 


AMERICAN   AMBULANCE   FIELD   SERVICE  33 

Poets,  painters,  sculptors,  musicians — the  flower  of 
France — they  are  all,  or  nearly  all,  fighting  side  by  side 
with  their  horny-handed  brothers  from  factory  and 
farm. 

Priests  there  are,  too,  in  abundance,  the  "aumoniers," 
or  fighting  priests,  with  crucifix  in  one  hand  and  rifle 
in  the  other,  many  of  them  decorated  with  the  Croix  de 
Guerre  and  Medaille  Militaire.  One  of  them,  with  the 
mud  of  the  trenches  still  thick  on  his  hobnailed  boots, 
celebrated  military  mass  on  Sunday  morning  in  the  little 
church  of  La  Veuve,  praying  for  comrades  left  behind  in 
the  last  attack,  reading  the  special  litany  addressed  to  the 
God  of  Battles,  "Deus  in  hello  fortis." 

The  church  was  crowded  to  its  utmost  capacity,  the 
doorway  was  thronged,  and  men  were  kneeling  on  the 
steps  and  in  the  street.  It  is  said,  on  good  authority,  that 
the  war  has  brought  more  Frenchmen  back  to  the  simple, 
trusting  Catholic  faith  of  their  fathers  than  any  influence 
in  the  past  hundred  years. 

*         *         * 

Dame  Rumor  whispers  that  we  are  to  be  on  the  move 
within  a  day  or  two.  The  soldiers  have  a  picturesque  ex- 
pression to  the  effect  that  they  have  heard  this  or  that 
"down  the  chimney  pipe,"  the  "tuyaii,"  a  phrase  cor- 
responding to  our  American  expression,  "A  little  bird 
told  me."  The  "tiiyan"  says  we  are  going  either  into  La 
Somme,  near  Arras,  or  to  Verdun.  But  no  one  knows, 
and  no  one  will  know,  until  we  get  our  marching  orders. 

Eh,  bien,  the  whisper  in  the  chimney-pipe  has  changed 
to  the  sound  of  rolling  wheels  and  bugle  calls.  We  are 
going  "the  Verdun  way."     This  very  night  we  watched 


34  DIARY   OF   SECTION    VIII 

our  67th  Regiment  tramping  out  of  the  village  in  the 
darkness  and  rain,  "hep,  hep,  hep,"  and  we  are  to  follow 
with  the  dawn. 

*         *         * 

Brabant  le  Roi,  June  12. — Fifty  kilometres  we  came 
in  cold  and  rain,  in  chilling  and  unbelievable  June 
weather,  and  here  we  are,  quartered  for  three  days  in  a 
huge  stock-farm  barn,  with  Verdun  fifty-five  kilometres 
further  north,  and  the  Revigny  railroad  head  two  kilo- 
metres south,  in  sight  among  the  trees. 

We  are  still  too  far  away  to  hear  the  guns.  The 
cackling  of  barnyard  fowl,  the  lowing  cows,  and  whinny- 
ing horses  would  make  war  seem  far  away,  were  it  not 
for  the  fact  that  our  barnyard  door  opens  directly  on 
the  main  highway  to  Verdun.  They  pass  in  an  un- 
broken procession,  night  and  day — the  marching  troops, 
the  black  soup-kitchens,  the  soixante-quinze  batteries, 
the  machine-guns  on  muleback,  the  horse  and  motor  am- 
bulances, the  huge  transport  trucks  carrying  thirty  men 
each — reminding  us  that  over  the  hills  beyond  the  waving 
wheat  fields  is  being  waged  the  greatest  battle  in  the 
history  of  the  world. 

"And  you  others?"  ask  the  marching  poiliis  as  they 
wave  a  passing  salutation. 

"Yes,"  we  answer,  with  a  new  feeling  of  comrade- 
ship as  we  look  into  their  serious  faces. 

"We  too  are  going  la-has." 

June  13.  Still  at  Brabant  le  Roi.  While  waiting  for 
orders  to  move  we  are  having  leisure  to  explore  this 
neighborhood,  which  the  Germans  passed  through  during 


AMERICAN   AMBULANCE    FIELD   SERVICE  35 

the  battle  of  the  Mame.  Nearly  every  village  was 
shelled  or  burned,  or  both,  but  the  extent  of  the  destruc- 
tion varies,  and  in  the  majority  of  the  towns  strange  con- 
trasts are  presented,  many  buildings,  and  even  entire 
streets  are  still  intact  and  inhabited,  while  other  whole 
sections  of  the  same  village  are  in  ruins. 

Revigny,  distant  only  ten  minutes'  walk  through  the 
wheatfields,  is  a  typical  example.  On  entering  the  town 
from  the  north  you  see  no  marks  of  war.  The  houses 
are  standing,  the  streets  are  full  of  children,  even  the 
lace  curtains  are  still  in  the  tidy  windows,  and  commerce 
goes  on;  but  walking  a  hundred  paces  further  and  turn- 
ing to  the  left  you  enter  another  quarter  where  the 
desolation  is  complete.  For  entire  blocks,  every  house 
is  crumbled  and  charred.  The  cathedral  presents  a  tragic 
spectacle ;  the  tower  is  half  shot  away  and  tottering.  The 
facade  is  mutilated  by  shells.  Great  holes  in  the  walls 
have  been  filled  up  by  temporary  carpentry,  and  though 
the  interior  is  partly  burned  the  people  of  the  town  still 
worship  among  the  charred  benches.  On  approaching 
the  fagade  from  the  square  one  is  struck  by  the  fact  that, 
while  tower  and  massive  pillars  have  been  crushed,  a 
delicately  executed  porcelain  statuette  of  the  Virgin  in 
a  pale  blue  robe  remains  with  its  serene  beauty  un- 
touched in  the  niche  above  the  door. 

Inside  the  cathedral,  above  the  arch  of  the  left  tran- 
sept, hangs  what  the  flames  left  of  a  huge  wooden  cruci- 
fix. The  cross  is  blackened,  and  of  the  carved  wood 
figure  of  the  Christ  nothing  remains  but  a  mutilated  fore- 
arm and  the  charred  feet,  still  held  in  place  by  the  heavy 
nails. 


36  DIARY   OF   SECTION   VIII 

It  is  always  the  church  that  suffers,  sometimes,  as 
the  French  insist  is  the  case,  through  the  sheer  wanton- 
ness of  the  invaders,  but  oftener,  we  are  tempted  to  be- 
lieve, because  its  thick  walls  make  it  the  strongest  forti- 
fied place  in  a  village,  and  its  tower  furnishes  a  valuable 
post  of  observation. 

It  was  in  a  ruined  church  at  Vaubecourt  that  we  next 
encountered  our  friend,  Cardinal-Kolsky,  the  artist 
stretcher-bearer  who  painted  our  portraits  at  La  Veuve. 
He  was  seated  on  a  pile  of  stones  amid  the  ruins,  sketch- 
ing what  was  left  of  the  walls,  with  three  great  bells, 
half  buried  in  the  grass,  in  the  foreground.  While  we 
watched  him  at  his  fascinating  work,  a  priest  told  us  the 
story  of  Vaubecourt's  destruction. 

It  was  while  the  Germans  were  sweeping  forward, 
with  the  French  in  retreat.  A  private  of  the  French  in- 
fantry, wounded  in  the  thigh,  overlooked  by  the  bran- 
cardiers  and  unable  to  follow  his  retreating  comrades, 
went  into  the  church  and  dragged  himself  up  in  the 
belfry  to  hide  from  the  Germans  who  were  taking  posses- 
sion of  the  village.  Later  they  found  him  there,  lying  in 
his  blood,  beneath  the  bells  (the  same  bells  that  are  now 
half  buried  in  the  grass).  They  dragged  him  down  from 
the  belfry,  and  though  he  was  almost  dead  from  loss  of 
blood  and  scarcely  conscious,  they  propped  him  against 
a  tree  and  shot  him  as  a  spy,  pretending  that  he  had  been 
sent  into  the  belfry  to  observe  their  movements  and  signal 
the  French  artillery.  Assuming  the  same  motive,  they 
hanged  the  cure  as  an  accomplice,  burned  the  church, 
killed  the  mayor,  and  set  fire  to  the  village — all  because  a 
wounded  poilu  had  happened  to  choose  the  belfry  as  a 
hiding  place. 


AMERICAN    AMBULANCE    FIELD   SERVICE  37 

Only  after  the  war  is  ended  will  the  world  know  how 
many  nameless  little  French  towns  suffered  a  like  fate. 
*         *         * 

It  was  among  the  ruins  of  one  of  these  little  villages 
in  the  Marne  that  Charlie  Faulkner  encountered  and 
made  friends  with  a  fluffy-haired  puppy  of  mongrel  breed 
in  which  the  setter  seemed  to  predominate,  and  straight- 
way adopted  him  as  the  mascot  of  Section  8. 

After  the  puppy  was  washed  and  as  many  of  the  fleas 
removed  from  his  hide  as  possible,  the  problem  of  a 
name  presented  itself.  We  learned  that  wine  instead  of 
water  is  used  at  a  French  christening,  and  the  circum- 
stance gave  someone  the  inspiration  to  suggest  the  name 
"Pinard"  which  is  wartime  slang  for  the  common  red 
wine  furnished  the  men  in  the  trenches.  So,  while  one 
of  us  held  the  struggling  infant,  another  poured  a  can- 
tine  of  the  sour  red  liquid  over  his  head,  and  the  christen- 
ing took  place;  the  soldiers  found  both  the  dog  and  the 
name  so  droll  that  Pinard  was  destined  to  become  not 
only  the  mascot  of  our  American  section  but  the  joke  and 
the  pet  of  the  whole  division. 

Apropos  of  the  name,  we  have  learned  that  the  French 
of  the  trenches  is  not  the  French  of  the  dictionar>\  They 
have  slang  or  "argot"  expressions  for  everything.  For 
wine,  they  have  three  or  four  slang  words  of  which  the 
two  most  usual  are  "pinard"  and  "pive."  Brandy,  or  eau 
de  vie,  is  known  as  "la  gniole."  To  eat,  which  is  manger 
in  regular  French,  is  "bonjfcr"  in  slang.  To  run  away, 
which  in  Paris  would  be  se  saiiver,  becomes  "se  trisser" 
in  the  trenches,  while  to  be  killed,  in  trench  argot  is 
"zigouille."    An  automobile  or  voiture  becomes  a  "bagn- 


38  DIARY   OF   SECTION   VIII 

iolle."  A  cook  or  cuisinier  becomes  a  "cuistot"  and  beef 
or  boeuf  becomes  "singe,"  which  literally  means  monkey. 
Some  of  the  boys  of  our  section  who  are  not  very 
strong  on  Fiench,  have  anglicized  Pinard's  name  and  call 
him  "Peanut." 

*         *         * 

Village  of  Dugny,  June  21.  Four  kilometres  behind 
the  city  of  Verdun. 

We  have  been  here  with  our  division  in  active  service 
since  June  18.  We  will  remain  here  for  perhaps  a  fort- 
night longer,  when  we  will  be  sent  back  into  repos  and 
replaced  by  a  new  division.  Three  weeks  is  about  the 
limit  of  human  endurance.  For  four  nerve-racking  days 
and  nights  our  little  cars  have  been  climbing  to  the  cita- 
del of  Verdun,  turning  to  the  right  and  going  into  the 
hills  among  the  batteries  and  bursting  shells,  to  a  poste 
de  secours  in  the  Fort  of  Tavannes  less  than  two  kilo- 
metres behind  Vaux  and  the  first-line  trenches.  The 
road  by  which  we  pass  is  shelled  day  and  night.  Ambu- 
lance drivers  have  been  killed  and  wounded  in  the  sec- 
tions which  preceded  us.  We  have  seen  men  mangled 
by  shells  bursting  a  few  yards  in  front  of  us  while  we 
have  escaped.  We  have  driven  our  cars  over  the  bodies 
of  dying  horses.  Three  of  our  cars  have  been  pierced  by 
shrapnel  and  shell  fragments.  Yet  not  a  man  among  us 
has  been  touched.  Lack  of  sleep,  the  continued  noise 
of  artillery,  bad  drinking  water  and  the  attendant  dysen- 
tery have  put  our  nerves  on  edge,  but  we  are  doing  the 
work  and  the  one  thought  in  the  minds  of  all  of  us,  when 
we  are  not  too  worn  out  to  think  at  all,  is  that,  come  what 
may,  we  are  going  to  stick  it  out. 


AMERICAN   AMBULANCE   FIELD   SERVICE  39 

It  is  hard  to  write  about — this  Verdun  service. 
Those  of  us  who  used  to  laugh  at  danger  have  stopped 
laughing.  Those  of  us  who  used  to  turn  pale  have  got 
the  same  set  look  about  the  jaws  and  eyes  as  the  rest,  but 
they  no  longer  change  color.  We  don't  come  back  any 
longer  and  tell  each  other  with  excited  interest  how  close 
this  or  that  shell  burst  to  our  car — it  is  sufficient  that  we 
come  back. 

*        *        * 

We  were  two  days  coming  here  from  Brabant  le  Roi. 
The  sun  was  shining,  after  fifteen  days  of  rain,  and  hap- 
pily has  continued  to  shine.  The  first  day,  we  reached 
Erize  la  Petite  and  spent  the  night  there.  On  the  morn- 
ing of  June  18  we  made  the  27  kilometres  from  that 
point  to  Dugny,  without  incident,  except  that  we  saw 
more  cannon  and  marching  soldiers  and  auto  trucks  and 
convoys  than  we  had  ever  dreamed  of  in  our  lives  before, 
two  steady  streams,  pouring  in  and  out  of  the  crater  of 
fire  and  death  toward  which  we  were  travelling.  Arriv- 
ing at  Dugny  we  found  quarters  in  a  hayloft,  so  small  and 
narrow  that  we  have  to  walk  about  on  our  own  beds  to 
move  from  one  side  of  the  place  to  the  other.  We  find 
one  big  advantage  in  being  in  Dugny,  to  wit,  that  the  Ger- 
mans are  not  shelling  the  village  proper,  but  are  only 
occasionally  dropping  bombs  around  the  railroad  station, 
which  is  outside  the  town  and  fully  half  a  kilometre  from 
where  we  are  quartered.  Our  cars  are  parked  in  the 
crowded  village  street,  while  our  kitchen  and  dining  tent 
have  been  installed  in  a  nearby  field. 

As  soon  as  we  had  unpacked,  a  dozen  of  us  were  de- 
tailed to  go  up  to  Tavannes,  riding  on  the  cars  of  the 


40  DIARY   OF   SECTION    VIII 

departing  French  ambulance  section,  to  learn  the  roads. 
Verdun,  as  everybody  knows,  is  protected  by  a  circling 
range  of  hills  forming  a  marvellous  natural  defense,  and 
on  these  hills  at  salient  points  are  located  the  outer 
forts.  Our  service  carries  us  to  the  northeastern  sec- 
tion of  this  circle,  which  touches  the  German  lines  at 
Vaux.  Dugny  is  in  a  valley.  Immediately  on  rising  to 
the  first  small  hilltop  going  out  of  Dugny  the  city  of 
Verdun  looms  into  view,  so  close  that  the  sheer  walls  of 
the  citadel  and  the  two  square  towers  of  the  cathedral 
are  distinctly  visible.  We  go  due  north  toward  Verdun, 
crossing  the  River  Meuse,  which  flows  behind  it,  skirt- 
ing the  city  limits  on  the  right,  descending  a  sharp  hill 
in  the  shadow  of  one  of  the  forts  of  the  city  proper — the 
first  spot  where  we  come  under  direct  shell  fire — and 
then  we  turn  sharply  to  the  northeast,  traversing  the 
ruined  suburb  called  Faubourg  Pave.  Emerging  from 
the  Faubourg  Pave  the  road  enters  a  valley  and  then 
begins  to  climb  in  a  northeasterly  direction  toward  Fort 
Tavannes,  which  is  the  highest  point  on  the  horizon.  To 
the  right  of  the  road  as  we  mount  are  the  big  French 
guns,  which  fire  over  our  heads.  French  soixante-qninse 
batteries  are  mounted  for  several  kilometres  so  close  to 
the  road  along  which  we  pass  that  at  that  place  shells  pass 
only  a  few  feet  over  our  heads.  Some  of  the  cannon 
muzzles  project  within  fifteen  yards  of  our  cars.  When 
they  go  oflf  they  seem  to  be  shooting  into  our  faces.  We 
mount  gradually  into  the  hills  toward  Fort  Tavannes  and, 
reaching  a  hillcrest,  turn  from  the  main  northeast  road, 
directly  north  along  a  narrow  artillery  road  which  runs 
two  or  three  kilometres  through  a  shell-swept  wood  to 


AMERICAN    AMBULANCE   FIELD    SERVICE  41 

the  huge  fort.  These  last  two  kilometres  are  the  most 
dangerous.  The  poste  de  secours  is  in  the  subterranean 
shell-proof  caves  of  the  fort,  and  our  cars  enter  the  shel- 
ter of  one  of  the  tunnels  in  the  fort,  remaining  in  this 
shelter  while  they  are  being  loaded.  Then  we  swing 
through  the  open  courtyard  of  the  fort,  emerging  from 
another  gate  and  retracing  the  road  back  to  Dugny.  The 
evacuation  poste  where  we  bring  the  wounded  is  in  the 
church  here. 

Words  cannot  describe  the  desolation  of  the  woods 
around  Tavannes.  The  tree  trunks  are  bare  and  often 
shattered.  Foliage  and  smaller  limbs  have  all  been  shot 
away.  The  ground  in  every  direction  as  far  as  the  eye 
can  reach  is  furrowed  and  torn.  The  few  houses  we  pass 
are  masses  of  crumbled  stone.  The  road  itself  is  little 
more  than  a  succession  of  shell  holes  that  are  made 
during  the  night  and  filled  up  with  crushed  stone  during 
the  day  while  the  firing  is  not  so  heavy.  Dead  horses 
and  mules  lie  and  rot  by  the  roadside  where  they  fell. 
Here  and  there  are  wrecks  of  ambulances  and  motor- 
cars, torn  by  shell  fragments,  sprayed  with  shrapnel.  To 
the  right  and  left  haggard  men  dart  like  rabbits  in  and 
out  of  invisible  hoyous,  or  conducting  trenches,  through 
which  they  pass  to  and  from  the  fighting  line.  The  front- 
line trenches  are  in  earshot  over  in  the  next  valley,  and 
the  German  artillery  is  on  the  next  northerly  range  of 
hills.'  The  German  observation  balloons,  or  saucisses, 
can  see  our  little  cars  as  they  climb  for  the  last  five  hun- 
dred metres  toward  the  shelter  of  the  fort,  but  whether 
their  guns  are  firing  directly  and  intentionally  on  us  or 
whether  it  is  all  simply  the  systematic  bombardment  of 
the  fort  and  road  we  will  probably  never  know. 


42  DIARY   OF   SECTION   VIII 

All  the  above  general  features  of  the  landscape  we 
became  acquainted  with  in  broad  daylight  when  we  went 
up  on  the  French  cars.  Our  first  actual  service  to  the 
fort,  however,  was  destined  to  occur  by  night — a  night 
which  never  had  a  parallel  in  any  of  our  lives  before. 

The  hundred  and  sixty  brancardiers,  or  stretcher- 
bearers,  of  our  section  had  to  be  transported  from 
Houdainville,  near  Dugny,  to  Fort  Tavannes,  and  the 
duty  fell  to  us.  Each  car  made  about  four  trips  by  night 
during  a  period  of  thirty-six  hours.  It  was  emergency 
work,  performed  during  the  hours  when  ambulances 
were  not  supposed  to  be  on  the  road,  on  account  of  the 
heavy  ravitaillement  traffic,  the  artillery  convoys  and 
long  lines  of  troops  going  to  and  from  the  trenches. 
Fully  half  the  distance  had  to  be  made  in  low  speed, 
crowded  on  all  sides  at  certain  points  by  heavy  trucks 
and  artillery.  The  Germans  were  bombarding  because 
they  knew  it  was  the  hour  of  heavy  movement  along 
the  roads.  The  French  were  replying  over  our  heads  to 
protect  the  convoys.  As  some  of  us  started  back  down 
the  long  hill  from  Tavannes  on  our  first  trip,  red  and 
green  flares  were  sent  up  from  Vaux,  the  signal  of  an 
attack  and  the  request  for  a  "tir  de  harage,"  or  curtain 
of  fire,  from  our  closest  soixante-quinze  batteries.  For 
fully  a  kilometre  the  whole  roadside  at  our  left  descend- 
ing, burst  into  a  mass  of  flame  from  the  muzzles  of  the 
guns.  A  gun  was  stationed  every  twenty  yards,  and 
each  gun  was  firing  from  twelve  to  eighteen  times  per 
minute.  The  noise  was  horrible  and  the  guns  were  so 
close  that  the  concussion  made  the  whole  earth  tremble. 
We  knew  that  all  the  shells  were  clearing  our  heads. 


AMERICAN    AMBULANCE   FIELD   SERVICE  43 

Our  intelligence  told  us  that  we  were  in  no  danger  from 
our  own  guns,  but  an  involuntary  instinct  stronger  than 
intelligence  made  us  crouch  low  over  our  steering-wheels. 

Some  of  us  remember,  silhouetted  black  against  the 
flame,  in  all  the  hurly-burly  confusion  of  the  rushing 
autos  and  convoys,  the  figure  of  a  tall,  gaunt  trooper, 
pipe  in  mouth,  on  a  horse  rawboned  and  tall  like  him- 
self, erect  and  calm  in  the  saddle,  his  shoulders  squared 
and  his  head  thrown  back  as  if  in  re  very.  And  when 
some  of  us,  struck  by  his  attitude,  lifted  our  faces  toward 
the  sky,  we  saw  the  stars  still  gleaming  far  above  the 
fire-swept  Verdun  hills. 

And  there  was  another  horseman  on  the  road  that 
night  whom  two  of  us  will  remember  when  the  more 
huge  and  spectacular  aspects  of  the  battle  of  Verdun 
have  been  dimmed  by  time.  It  was  on  the  second  trip 
that  night  when  we  were  descending  the  wooded  hill 
near  the  Porte  St.  Victor  at  the  right  of  Verdun.  We 
were  blocked  behind  a  slow-moving  artillery  battalion, 
while  at  our  left  a  wagon  convoy  was  mounting.  Sud- 
denly there  was  a  grating  of  wheels,  a  shrill  sound  of 
whistles,  sharp  and  distinct  amid  the  thundering  guns, 
and  all  was  confusion.  A  shell  had  crashed  into  a  tree 
at  the  left  of  the  road  and  exploded  on  contact,  some 
fifty  feet  ahead  of  us.  The  tree  had  crashed  across  the 
road,  wrecking  a  caisson,  while  a  big  shell  fragment  had 
struck  the  rider  of  the  wheel  horse  full  in  the  chest.  He 
lay  beside  the  road,  mangled  as  if  he  had  been  in  a  rail- 
road wreck,  but  still  conscious.  More  horrible  than  the 
blood,  more  horrible  than  the  gaping  wound,  were  the 
unnatural  sounds  he  uttered — the  wordless,  primordial 


44  DIARY   OF    SECTION   VIII 

cry  of  a  stricken  animal  in  which  there  was  nothing  left 
of  human. 

*  *         * 

On  such  a  road  it  was  inevitable  that  some  of  our 
cars  and  some  of  our  men  would  be  touched.  We  were 
at  it  night  and  day  without  respite.  Three  of  our  twenty 
cars  were  "en  panne/'  and  the  other  seventeen  were 
doing  the  work  supposed  normally  to  be  done  by  two 
sections  totalling  forty  cars.  It  meant  that  each  car  had 
to  make  from  five  to  seven  trips  per  days,  so  that  some 
of  our  machines  were  on  the  road  every  instant.  It  was 
during  this  time  of  stress  that  we  evacuated  five  hundred 
and  forty  wounded  from  Tavannes  Fort  to  Dugny,  a 
distance  of  fifteen  kilometres  each  way,  in  twenty-four 
hours,  making  the  record  of  the  war  for  that  particular 
paste.  On  the  night  of  June  19  Davison  answered  a  mid- 
night Tavannes  call  and  had  his  car  pierced  through  and 
through  with  shell  fragments  as  he  was  entering  the  fort. 
The  following  morning,  between  four  and  five  a.m.,  as 
Seabrook  was  leaving  the  fort  with  a  load  of  wounded, 
his  car  was  struck  in  the  same  way.  Both  Davison  and 
Seabrook  were  untouched,  but  one  of  the  wounded  men 
in  the  latter's  car  was  hit  in  the  side  by  a  small  frag- 
ment. The  same  day  Lieutenant  Paroissien  had  a  nar- 
row escape  at  Bar-le-Duc,  when  a  piece  of  an  aeroplane 
bomb  struck  him  in  the  chest,  but  lodged  among  the 
papers  of  a  heavy  leather  pocket-book.  In  the  afternoon, 
Rogers,  lying  on  the  grass  near  our  dining  tent,  received 
a  slight  surface  wound  in  the  leg  from  a  stray  piece  of 

shell. 

*  *         * 


AMERICAN    AMBULANCE    FIELD   SERVICE  45 

On  the  morning  of  the  20th,  the  entrance  tunnel  at 
the  Fort  of  Tavannes  was  caved  in  by  German  "380" 
high-explosive  shells.  Rogers,  Faulkner,  Boyd,  and  Mac- 
Monagle  were  in  the  fort  at  the  time,  and  escaped  with 
their  lives  by  a  miracle.  They  were  felled  to  the  ground 
by  the  concussion ;  the  windows  of  the  cars  and  even 
part  of  the  woodwork  were  shattered  by  the  shock,  while 
wounded  men  and  stretcher-bearers  within  only  a  few 
yards  of  them  were  buried  under  the  debris  during  the 
bombardment. 

The  place  was  no  longer  tenable  as  a  poste  de  secours, 
as  the  Germans  had  the  exact  range,  with  their  observa- 
tion balloons  in  full  sight,  and  they  were  dropping  high- 
explosive  shells  at  will  on  the  fort  and  on  the  road  enter- 
ing it.  So  the  poste  de  secours  was  abandoned  and  re- 
established in  a  ruined  house  known  as  the  Cabaret 
Rouge,  three  kilometres  back  on  the  road,  among  the 
French  batteries. 

About  one  time  each  night  one  of  our  cars  still  ven- 
tures on  an  emergency  call  to  the  mass  of  ruins  which 
was  Tavannes,  but  we  do  not  make  it  any  longer  as  a 
regular  poste.  And  while  we  were  not  afraid  to  go,  we 
are  glad,  for  the  underground,  vaulted  tunnels  of  that 
fort  composed  a  chamber  of  horrors  which  we  remember 
in  our  dreams.  The  floors  were  mud,  the  ceiling  slimy, 
dripping  stone.  The  light  was  scant,  the  wounded  were 
so  numerous  that  we  had  to  step  over  their  prostrate 
bodies.  The  stench  was  terrible. 
*         *         * 

So,  on  June  24,  the  Cabaret  Rouge  became  our  regu- 
lar poste  de  secours.    The  picturesque  name  of  the  place 


46  DIARY   OF   SECTION   VIII 

has  a  diabolical  fitness.  Victor  Hugo  might  have  named 
it  in  a  moment  when  his  genius  was  at  its  height.  It 
is  bizarre,  dramatic,  romanesque. 

You  are  asleep  in  the  straw,  perhaps  dreaming  of 
home.  Toward  midnight  you  are  awakened  by  a  hand  on 
your  shoulder,  and  a  whispered  voice  says :  "We  are 
going  to  the  Cabaret  tonight — the  Cabaret  Rouge." 

If  hell  has  its  theatres  and  cabarets,  the  devil  will 
do  well  to  pattern  his  entertainments  from  the  spectacle 
we  see  nightly  at  this  one.  The  house  is  halfway  up  the 
slope  in  a  valley.  Behind  it,  in  front  of  it,  on  all  sides 
of  it  are  the  French  batteries.  The  German  shells  are 
bursting  in  the  fields  around,  while  our  own  guns  flash 
and  thunder  incessantly.  Immediately  in  front  of  us, 
above  the  hilltop  a  couple  of  kilometres  distant,  the  red 
signal  rockets  illumine  the  sky,  varied  occasionally  by  a 
white  rocket  demanding  a  curtain  fire  or  concentrated 
artillery  bombardment  at  a  certain  point  in  the  trenches; 
sometimes  a  green  flare  warning  us  of  a  gas  attack. 
Down  from  the  trenches,  along  the  winding  boyous,  come 
the  stretcher-bearers  with  their  crimson  burdens.  They 
are  deposited  on  the  straw,  re-bandaged,  given  a  drink 
of  water  or  cold  tea,  and  loaded  into  our  cars — some- 
times groaning,  sometimes  shrieking,  sometimes  silent. 
The  wall  of  the  house,  with  a  shell-hole  through  it  big 
enough  for  five  men  to  stand  in,  looms  dirty  red  amid  the 
flashes  of  artillery.     Red  Cabaret,  red  rockets,  red  fire. 

red  blood. 

*         *         * 

And  they  keep  shelling  the  road.  On  the  night  of 
the  23d,  Charlie  Faulkner,  volunteering  to  drive  a  car. 


AMERICAN    AMBULANCE   FIELD    SERVICE  47 

had  the  metal  part  of  the  searchlight  (which  we  are  not 
allowed  to  use)  smashed  by  a  shell.  On  the  night  of  the 
24th,  Keogh,  the  laughing,  brave-hearted  boy  we  love 
perhaps  most  of  all,  came  walking  back  with  his  arm 
streaming  blood.  He  had  been  hit  less  than  a  kilometre 
up  the  road  from  Dugny.  He  had  tried  to  steer  his  car 
with  one  hand,  but  ditched  it  on  the  roadside  and  man- 
aged to  get  back  on  foot.  How  glad  we  all  were  to  find 
that  by  a  lucky  chance  the  fragments  had  missed  the  bone 
and  that  the  wound  was  not  dangerous.  He  was  ban- 
daged and  sent  back  to  the  hospital  at  Neuilly,  the  hero 
of  the  hour. 

On  the  night  of  the  25th  Seabrook  broke  an  axle 
within  a  hundred  yards  of  Cabaret,  and  found  himself 
stuck  in  the  zone  of  a  gas  attack.  The  Germans  were 
sending  asphyxiating  and  chrymogen  bombs,  and  inside 
of  an  hour  many  of  the  mien  at  the  paste  were  dropping 
unconscious  despite  the  protection  of  their  masks. 
Faulkner,  accompanied  by  Ivrou,  the  French  mechanic, 
went  to  find  out  what  had  become  of  the  missing  man. 
Coming  unexpectedly  into  the  gas  zone  Faulkner  found 
that  Ivrou  had  started  without  a  mask.  He  gave  his 
gas  mask  to  Ivrou  and  continued  to  Cabaret,  where  they 
arrived  just  as  Seabrook,  in  a  half-fainting  condition, 
was  being  put  into  a  wagon.  They  transferred  him  to 
their  car,  and  got  back  safely. 

Our  men  luckily  felt  no  bad  after-effects,  but  for  the 

next  twenty-four  hours  the  Dugny  hospital  was  full  of 

gas  victims,  many  of  whom  died. 
*         *         * 

On  June  25  a  French  ambulance  section  arrived  in 


48  DIARY   OF   SECTION   VIII 

Dugny  to  share  the  work  with  us,  reducing  the  amount 
of  our  labor  more  nearly  to  normal.  Three  days  later, 
on  June  28,  the  French  section  was  replaced  by  Section  1 
of  our  own  American  Field  Ambulance,  so  that  we  now 
have  two  sections,  parked  side  by  side  here,  with  forty 
cars  doing  the  work  that  we  originally  had  to  do  with 
seventeen  cars. 

During  this  same  period  we  have  temporarily  lost 
the  following  men :  Keogh,  wounded ;  Thomas,  ill ; 
Crocker,  ill.  All  three  are  at  the  hospital  in  Neuilly,  and 
we  look  forward  to  their  return. 

Girdwood  and  McKee  left  the  section  soon  after  our 
arrival  at  Verdun  and  will  not  return. 

New  men  in  the  section,  in  the  order  of  their  arrival, 
are  MacMonagle,  Read,Lumsden,  Harper,  and  Shoninger. 
MacMonagle  came  in  time  to  share  the  first  hardships, 
the  others  after  we  had  been  relieved  of  the  double  work. 

Since  we  left  La  Veuve,  our  French  contingent  had 
been  increased  by  the  presence  of  M.  Roger,  a  charming 
gentleman  who  has  succeeded  M.  Moreau  as  marechal 
du  logis  and  aide  to  the  lieutenant  commandant.  M. 
Moreau,  however,  also  remains  with  us. 
*         *         * 

On  June  27  Charlie  Faulkner  saved  a  French  soldier 
from  drowning  in  the  swift  current  of  the  Meuse,  where 
we  often  go  to  swim. 

The  drowning  man  had  entered  the  river  at  a  point 
some  hundred  yards  above  where  the  Americans  were 
swimming.  At  least  a  score  of  men  were  closer  to  him 
when  he  began  to  scream  and  throw  up  his  arms,  but 
they  merely  gathered  on  the  bank  as  he  was  carried  past 


AMERICAN    AMBULANCE    FIELD    SERVICE  49 

and  shouted  advice  to  him.  Faulkner  went  in  and  got 
him,  having  to  swim  against  the  current  and  go  twice 
to  the  bottom  before  he  finally  reappeared  with  his  bur- 
den. The  river  was  filled  with  reeds  except  in  the  main 
current,  and,  making  his  way  to  the  supporting  reeds, 
Faulkner  shouted  for  aid,  as  there  was  some  dangerous 
water  still  to  traverse  before  reaching  solid  ground.  By 
that  time  some  of  the  other  men  were  in  the  water 
helping,  with  onlookers  still  gestulating  on  the  bank. 
Finally  they  decided  to  aid,  and  while  one  of  their  num- 
ber unwound  a  long  sash  from  around  his  stomach, 
another,  clinging  to  the  end  of  the  sash,  waded  out  about 
to  the  depth  of  his  waist  and  managed  to  help  establish 
connection  with  the  bank. 

The  Frenchmen  were  filled  with  gratitude  and  ad- 
miration. "We  can't  swim  like  Americans,"  was  one  of 
their  repeated  comments. 

Faulkner,  after  doing  a  really  heroic  thing  in  the 
water,  made  a  sort  of  "motion-picture"  hero  out  of  him- 
self on  land,  leaping  on  a  bareback  horse  and  galloping 
across  the  marshes  to  Dugny  for  a  doctor  and  an  am- 
bulance. Soon  the  little  Ford  came  tearing  out  the  road 
in  best  three-reel-thriller  style  with  Faulkner  on  the  seat. 

We  all  began  laughing,  and  wondered  if  he  had  the 

horse  inside. 

*         ♦         ♦ 

Decidedly,  we  are  going  into  the  artillery  if  the 
United  States  is  ever  unfortunate  enough  to  be  at  war. 
The  infantry  soldier  of  the  first  line  is  going  through  a 
hell  every  day  and  every  minute,  compared  to  which  the 
lot  of  our  friends  the  artillerymen  is  a  mild  sort  of  pur- 
gatory. 


50  DIARY   OF   SECTION   VIII 

There  is  a  soixante-quinze  battery  in  a  wheatfield 
near  a  point  where  we  often  stop.  When  the  Germans 
are  not  shelling  them  too  hard  they  sit  around  in  the  sun- 
shine, and  pick  flowers,  and  take  photographs,  and  invite 
us  to  have  coffee  with  them. 

Every  little  while  their  lieutenant  emerges  from  a 
dug-out  which  is  connected  by  telephone  with  the  first- 
line  observation  posts,  and  orders  them  to  place  so  many 
shells  at  a  certain  spot  on  the  map,  so  many  metres  dis- 
tant. Each  soixante-quinze  is  capable,  when  necessary, 
of  firing  twenty  times  per  minute,  so  that  it  is  an  affair 
of  less  than  five  minutes  for  a  battery  of  four  guns, 
working  only  at  moderate  speed,  to  deliver  a  hundred 
shells  as  per  order. 

Sometimes  they  are  cracking  away  all  the  time;  on 
other  occasions  they  are  idle  for  hours. 

The  artillerymen  get  their  meals  regularly;  they  get 
their  mail  every  day ;  occasionally  a  German  shell  falls 
true  and  they  get  killed.  But  when  they  are  not  getting 
killed  they  are  quite  comfortable — and  we  have  learned 
that  there  are  a  good  many  things  in  war  worse  than 
getting  killed. 

Decidedly,  if  we  ever  have  to  fight,  we  are  going  to 
join  the  artillery. 

*         *         * 

The  chief  medical  officers  of  the  division  tell  us  that 
our  little  cars  are  doing  great  work.  We  are  glad,  for 
we  have  been  doing  the  best  we  can,  and,  without  know- 
ing it,  it  seems  that  we  have  established  some  new 
records  in  this  sector. 

Official  records  of  our  "best  day,"  June  22,  show  that 


AMERICAN   AMBULANCE   FIELD   SERVICE  51 

in  twenty-four  hours  we  transported  555  wounded  from 
Tavannes  and  Cabaret  to  Dugny,  an  average  distance  per 
round  trip  of  twenty-five  kilometres.  One  of  our  men 
was  ill,  so  that  the  work  was  done  by  nineteen  cars,  the 
total  nineteen  making  an  aggregate  distance  of  1339  kilo- 
metres loaded,  and  1359  kilometres  empty,  or  an  average 
of  about  142  kilometres  per  car.  Practically  all  the  work 
was  done  under  shell  fire.  Armour  made  the  best  in- 
dividual record,  totalling  four  trips  to  Tavannes  and  five 
to  Cabaret,  carrying  a  total  of  51  wounded. 

During  the  above  twenty- four  hours,  five  of  our 
cars  were  struck  and  pierced  by  shrapnel  or  shell- 
casings,  yet  not  one  of  our  drivers  was  wounded. 

H:  4:  iH 

While  we  were  doing  our  humble  but  necessary  part 
behind  the  trenches,  the  men  of  our  division  were  win- 
ning glory  and  making  history.  They  went  up  twelve 
thousand  and  came  back  seven  thousand,  having  sus- 
tained more  than  forty  per  cent  loss  in  killed,  wounded, 
and  gas  illness;  but  they  did  their  work.  One  company 
went  up  130  men,  and  came  back  seven. 

But  the  French  now  have  a  double  consolation — the 
assurance  of  ultimate  victory,  and  the  absolute,  definite 
knowledge  that  the  German  losses  in  front  of  Verdun 
are  appallingly  greater  than  their  own. 

On  the  Fourth  of  July  a  courier  brought  us  a  grace- 
fully worded  order  from  the  general  staff  to  the  eff^ect 
that  because  of  America's  national  holiday  fifty  per 
cent  of  all  Americans  on  the  fighting-line  were  granted 
a  special  forty-eight  hours'  leave — provided  the  exigen- 
cies of  their  individual  units  permitted  them  to  get 
away. 


52  DIARY   OF    SECTION    VIII 

Our  work  here  had  been  growing  lighter  for  several 
days,  and  it  was  decided  to  let  half  our  men  go  to  Paris. 

They  were  taken  in  auto  to  a  railroad  station  fifty 
kilometres  back,  where  they  took  the  train. 

When  they  returned,  laden  with  chocolate,  pastry, 
and  fruit.  Lieutenant  Paroissien  met  them  at  the  train 
with  a  surprise.  During  their  absence  Section  8  had 
left  Dugny  and  had  gone  in  convoy  to  Ancerville,  a 
lovely  village  near  the  border  of  the  departments  of  the 
Haute-Marne  and  Meuse,  fully  eighty  kilometres  behind 
the  lines,  out  of  sound  of  the  guns,  and  in  a  section  of 
the  country  on  which  the  Germans  had  never  set  foot. 

It  was  there  that  we  spent  a  week,  out  of  sight  of 
ruins,  ovit  of  sound  of  war,  among  civilian  population, 
dear  old  women  of  the  best  French  peasant  type,  the 
streets  swarming  with  children,  the  old  men  cultivating 
the  fields,  the  entire  life  of  the  little  town  going  on.  The 
only  evidence  of  war  was  the  presence  everywhere  of 
our  soldiers,  billeted  in  the  barns  and  houses  wherever 
there  was  room  to  sleep. 

Ancerville  is  a  rather  large,  prosperous,  country  town, 
and  those  of  us  who  wished  were  permitted  to  rent  rooms 
in  the  private  houses  and  enjoy  the  unaccustomed  luxury 
of  a  bed  with  sheets  and  pillows. 

On  Sunday  afternoon  the  band  to  the  106th  Regiment 
assembled  in  the  public  square  for  a  concert.  Musicians 
exercise  the  duties  of  stretcher-bearers  at  the  front,  and 
of  the  thirty  whom  we  had  heard  play  in  La  Veuve, 
twelve  were  missing,  seven  of  them  killed  and  the  other 
five  wounded.  They  played  music  from  Massenet's 
"Manon"  and  a  part  of  Tchaikowsky's  "Symphonie  Pa- 


AMERICAN    AMBULANCE   FIELD   SERVICE  53 

thetique."  Such  strange  contrasts  does  this  war  offer ! 
Last  week,  the  horror  of  exploding  shells  mingled  with 
the  screams  and  groans  of  wounded  and  dying ;  this  week, 
charming  music,  laughing  children,  green  trees,  brooks, 
fountains,  singing  birds,  old  women  in  white  caps  seated 
peacefully  in  their  doorways  shelling  peas. 

While  in  Ancerville  the  great  French  fete  day,  the 
Fourteenth  of  July,  arrived,  marking  the  fall  of  the 
Bastille  and  the  birth  of  Liberty.  We  joined  heart  and 
soul  with  our  friends  of  the  division  in  celebrating  it. 
Against  a  hillside,  in  a  grove  outside  the  village,  a  stage 
was  erected,  and  a  carefully  rehearsed  vaudeville  per- 
formance was  presented  to  an  audience  composed  of 
most  of  the  division  and  most  of  the  village — an  audi- 
ence in  which  men  just  out  of  the  trenches  sat  with 
children  in  their  laps,  beside  admiring  country  girls  and 
motherly  old  peasant  women — an  audience  that  over- 
flowed the  space  provided  for  it  and  climbed  into  the 
trees  on  the  hillside. 

The  programme  was  in  charge  of  the  106th  Regiment, 
and  consisted  of  everything  from  classic  music  by  con- 
servatory graduates  to  low  comedy  by  Montmartre 
clowns.  The  American  Ambulance  was  featured  on  the 
programme  as  the  "grande  attraction,"  and  consisted  of 
mandolin  and  guitar  music  by  Armour  and  Jacobs,  fol- 
lowed by  a  boxing  bout  between  Jacobs  and  MacMonagle, 
and  another  bout  between  Buffum  and  Armour.  The 
applause  was  generous  and  sincere. 

Jacobs  also  figured  on  the  programme  as  piano  accom- 
panist for  a  wonderful  violinist,  and  their  splendid  work 
was,  from  a  serious  standpoint,  the  best  feature  of  the 
programme. 


54  DIARY    OF    SECTION    VIII 

As  an  integral  part  of  the  French  army,  our  section 
was  furnished  with  special  rations,  including  champagne 
and  cigars,  for  the  quatorze  Juillet  dinner,  and  that  night 
there  was  a  torchlight  procession  through  the  village,  in 
which  our  boys  carried  lanterns,  marching  and  singing 
side  by  side  and  arm  in  arm  with  the  poilus. 

But,  alas !  immediately  on  the  heels  of  this  happy  day 
came  to  our  section  the  first  two  real  chagrins  and  occa- 
sions for  regret  we  have  had  since  we  took  the  field. 
The  first  was  the  news  that  we  were  to  be  separated  from 
our  division,  perhaps  permanently,  and  the  second,  the 
illness  of  our  Commandant  and  friend.  Lieutenant 
Paroissien,  which  we  trust  will  not  be  serious,  but  which 
has  laid  him  in  a  military  hospital  in  a  neighboring  town. 

Shortly  after  midnight,  the  morning  of  July  17,  we 
were  ordered  to  leave  at  dawn.  We  were  to  go  back  to 
Dugny,  leaving  the  division  behind,  and,  after  three  or 
four  hours  of  fast  work,  we  got  ever}^thing  loaded,  and 
filed  out  of  the  town.  Early  as  it  was,  scores  of  our 
personal  friends  in  the  division  came  to  bid  us  goodbye. 
We  were  awfully  sorry  to  leave  them,  and  are  still 
hoping  that  the  exigencies  of  war  will  enable  us  to  re- 
join them  later,  or  enable  them  to  rejoin  us. 

After  an  easy  and  uneventful  run  we  arrived  in 
Dugny,  and  lined  our  cars  up  in  the  old  familiar  way 
in  the  centre  of  the  town  near  the  church-hospital.  Our 
quarters  are  less  than  one  hundred  yards  from  those  we 
had  before,  and  somewhat  more  comfortable.  Our  work 
is  to  be  the  same — in  fact,  we  hadn't  been  in  the  town 
five  minutes  when  an  orderly  came  with  his  little  square 
scrap  of  paper :  "Two  cars  quick  to  the  Cabaret  Rouge." 


AMERICAN   AMBULANCE    FIELD   SERVICE  55 

So  history  repeats  itself. 

The  people  of  Dugny,  including  the  few  civilians  left, 
remember  us  and  seem  glad  to  see  us  again — especially 
the  little  woman  who  still  makes  "Cafe  cliaud  a  toute 
heiire."  We  brought  her  a  dozen  glasses,  which  she 
needed,  and  some  shirts  for  her  little  boy,  from  Paris. 

But  it  was  the  Germans  who  really  gave  us  the  warm- 
est welcome  back  to  Dugny. 

The  very  evening  of  our  arrival,  as  we  were  seated 
under  the  tent  at  supper,  there  was  a  whizz  and  shriek 
over  our  heads,  and  a  "130"  shell,  the  first  to  ever  fall 
actually  in  the  streets  of  the  town,  exploded  fifty  yards 
from  our  quarters,  wrecking  four  French  automobiles. 
We  finished  our  dinner,  and  then  measured  oiT  the  dis- 
tance. It  was  exactly  fifty  paces  from  where  our  cars 
are  parked. 

The  following  morning,  July  19,  there  was  conster- 
nation in  the  section.  Pinard  was  missing.  He  came  on 
Armour's  car  from  Ancerville  to  Dugny,  and  had  been 
seen  frolicking  around  the  street  just  prior  to  the  time 
the  shell  broke,  but  he  hadn't  been  seen  since,  and  now 
there  was  no  trace  of  him. 

We  didn't  seriously  believe  he  had  been  struck  by 
the  shell,  but  he  had  nevertheless  completely  disappeared. 
It  was  only  by  good  luck  that  we  ever  found  him  again. 
Armour  and  M.  Roger  found  it  necessary  to  return  to 
Ancerville  for  a  day,  and  there,  exhausted  and  asleep 
in  the  straw  of  the  deserted  house  where  we  had  slept, 
they  found  Pinard,  lonely,  miserable,  lost. 

Triumphantly  they  brought  him  back,  and  there  was 


56  DIARY   OF    SECTION   VIII 

joy  at  his  return.     Whether  he  was  carried  back  on  a 
passing  camion,  or  whether  he  started  due  south  when 
the   shell   burst   and   never   stopped   running    until    he 
reached  Ancerville,  is  a  matter  of  conjecture. 
*         *         * 

Dugny,  Verdun  Front,  July  25. — The  poste  de  secours 
at  Cabaret  Rouge,  which  we  are  serving  again  as  in  the 
latter  part  of  June,  has  changed  in  many  aspects  during 
our  absence.  The  Cabaret  sector,  which  our  "Fighting 
Twelfth"  occupied  when  we  were  here  before,  is  now 
held  by  a  division  of  African  colonials,  in  which  negroes 
and  Arabs  predominate.  Their  uniforms  are  of  khaki, 
like  our  own,  and  their  steel  helmets,  when  they  have 
helmets,  are  khaki-colored  too,  but  everywhere  except 
in  the  first  line  they  prefer  to  wear  their  tall  red  caps, 
which  are  like  the  traditional  fez,  but  minus  the  black 
tassel.  They  are  great  fighters  and  have  done  some  won- 
derful hand-to-hand  work  around  Fleury  and  the 
Tavannes  tunnel. 

Most  of  the  Arab  and  black  colonials  are  Mahom- 
etans, and  insist  on  praying  at  mysterious  hours  regard- 
less of  where  they  are  or  what  they  happen  to  be  doing. 
One  of  our  drivers  descending  from  Cabaret  at  dawn 
yesterday  with  a  load  of  wounded,  heard  a  great  com- 
motion behind  him  in  the  car,  and  on  stopping  found  that 
a  wounded  Arab  had  crawled  out  of  his  stretcher  and  was 
kneeling  with  his  feet  unconsciously  protruding  across 
the  face  of  a  Frenchman,  praying  at  a  great  rate  in  a 
strange  tongue,  with  the  car  jolting  over  the  shell  holes. 

Another  peculiarity  of  some  of  our  colored  allies  are 
that  they  are  not  particular  at  all   times   about  having 


AMERICAN    AMBULANCE    FIELD    SERVICE  57 

their  meat  cooked.  One  morning  recently  a  crowd  of 
them  just  back  from  the  trenches,  and  ravenously  hun- 
gry, grabbed  chunks  of  bloody,  raw  beef  from  the  hands 
of  their  cook  as  he  was  conveying  it  to  the  kettle,  and 
ate  it  with  keen  relish,  while  French  poilus  hurried  from 
all  directions  to  witness  the  strange  sight. 

The  troops  in  our  sector  are  now  taking  many  Ger- 
man prisoners,  and  frequently  they  stop  at  Cabaret,  a 
hundred  at  a  time,  under  guard,  to  rest  and  get  water,  on 
their  march  back  to  the  interior.  They  are  mostly 
simple,  haggard  peasants,  intensely  human,  and  intensely 
grateful  for  a  little  kindness — and  even  the  French  sol- 
diers who  have  suffered  most  terribly  seem  to  realize  in- 
stinctively that  the  terrible  indictment  of  barbarity  which 
the  world  has  brought  against  Prussianism  and  the 
Hohenzollern  military  principles  in  this  war,  cannot  be 
justly  laid  to  the  door  of  these  simple  Bavarian  farmers 
who  have  fallen  into  their  hands.  It  is  true,  nevertheless, 
that  the  French  hate  with  a  bitter  hatred  all  Germans 
in  the  trenches,  but  when  poor  Fritz  is  w'ounded,  worn 
out,  thirsty,  and  a  prisoner,  he  becomes  a  different  per- 
son. We  have  seen  French  soldiers,  themselves  as 
weary  and  in  need  of  refreshment  as  their  prisoners, 
carrying  water  to  Fritz  and  holding  his  bandaged  head 
while  the  cup  is  put  to  his  lips  before  they  themselves 
have  had  water. 

The  negro  troops  cannot  comprehend  this  spirit. 
When  a  detachment  of  German  prisoners  arrives,  they 
surround  them  with  laughs  and  taunts  and  jeers,  and  fre- 
quently even  dance  in  their  glee.  When  the  French 
guards  are  not  watching  too  closely  they  will  draw  their 


58  DIARY   OF   SECTION   VIII 

knives  and  bayonets,  and  slily  approaching  a  German, 
will  go  through  all  the  pantomime  motions  of  running 
him  through  the  body,  or  cutting  his  throat,  usually 
laughing  meanwhile,  and  breaking  into  shouts  of  joy  if 
the  prisoner  shows  fear. 

We  are  all  avid  for  German  souvenirs,  and  so  are  the 
poilus.  The  moment  prisoners  arrive  there  is  a  good- 
natured  onslaught  with  scissors  and  pocket  knives,  in 
which  we  are  allowed  to  join,  and  soon  Fritz  finds  him- 
self divested  of  all  the  brass  buttons  from  his  sleeves  and 
coat-tails.  Fritz,  besides,  is  usually  perfectly  willing, 
and  often  amused  at  the  operations,  particularly  as  it 
seems  to  be  an  unwritten  rule  to  always  leave  him  the 
front  buttons,  which  actually  keep  his  coat  in  place. 
Some  of  the  buttons  are  very  beautiful,  with  the  Prus- 
sian eagles,  or  the  Bavarian  lion.  It  is  an  amusing  sight 
indeed  to  see  a  patient  German,  standing  quietly  and 
doubtless  wondering  what  will  happen  next,  with  three 
or  four  poilus,  and  possibly  an  American  ambulance 
driver,  clinging  to  his  coat-tail,  and  cursing  the  stout 
thread,  which,  like  everything  else  German,  is  strong  to 
resist  attack. 

Sometimes  they  are  willing  to  let  us  take  their  little 
red-banded  vizerless  caps  (spiked  helmets  are  almost  a 
thing  of  the  past)  provided  we  give  them  some  kind  of 
head-covering  in  exchange,  but  we  have  never  seen  an 
American,  or  Frenchman  either,  take  a  cap  from  a  Ger- 
man without  asking  it  and  unless  the  owner  was  willing. 
*         *         * 

The  bombardment  of  the  roads  in  the  neighborhood 
of  Cabaret  is  not  nearly  so  severe  as  it  was  in  June,  and 


AMERICAN   AMBULANCE   FIELD   SERVICE  59 

frequently  now  we  are  able  to  sit  on  the  crest  of  some 
nearby  hill  in  comparative  safety  and  watch  the  work 
of  our  batteries,  at  the  same  time  getting  an  unobstructed 
view  of  the  occasional  German  shells  which  still  drop 
around  us  seeking  out  the  French  guns  and  ammunition 
convoys,  but  usually  in  vain.  An  hour  of  such  observa- 
tion is  calculated  to  make  a  man  wonder  whether  blind 
chance  rules  the  universe,  or  whether  a  special  Personal 
Providence  ordains  every  hit  and  miss.  We  see,  for 
instance,  a  certain  unprotected  stretch  of  road  between 
hills  a  few  hundred  yards  from  where  we  sit.  We  see 
four  German  shells  land  squarely  on  the  road  at  a  certain 
spot,  at  exact  intervals  of  three  minutes.  Then  we 
discern  a  wagon  train  moving  up  toward  that  spot  in  the 
road.  The  drivers  cannot  see,  as  we  can,  just  where 
the  shells  are  hitting.  We  take  out  our  watches  and 
figure  that  unless  they  stop,  the  next  shell  will  be  timed 
to  get  them.  The  three  minutes  elapse.  The  wagon 
train  is  immediately  over  the  shell-craters.  The  German 
shell,  exactly  to  the  second,  whizzes  over  our  heads. 
There  is  a  breathless  fraction  of  a  second,  while  we  strain 
our  eyes,  and  the  shell  breaks  at  an  entirely  new  point, 
two  hundred  yards  short  of  the  road.  Lucky  wagon 
train. 

A  queer  story  came  to  us  a  couple  of  nights  ago  about 
a  German  wireless  message,  said  to  have  been  picked  up 
by  a  French  station  over  on  the  other  side  of  Verdun 
near  Mort  Homme.  Rumor  said  the  message  was  from 
German  general  staflF,  announcing  that  an  American 
ambulance  unit  had  been  seen  by  German  aviators,  work- 
ing the  Cabaret  Rouge  poste,  and  instructing  the  German 
gunners  not  to  fire  on  Cabaret. 


60  DIARY   OF    SECTION   VIII 

We  began  to  imagine  the  fantastic  story  might  be 
true,  as  it  so  happened  that  few  shells  had  fallen  close  to 
Cabaret  during  the  past  forty-eight  hours.  But  just  as 
we  were  beginning  to  give  serious  credence  to  the  rumor, 
word  came  that  fifteen  men  had  been  killed  and  fifty 
wounded  by  shells  within  a  few  paces  of  the  post.  A 
few  hours  afterwards,  while  lasigi's  car  was  standing  in 
front  of  Cabaret,  a  German  "'J']"  landed  within  five  paces 
of  it,  luckily  doing  no  damage.  No  wonder  we  are  now 
laughing  at  our  own  credulity. 

*         *         * 

The  wagons,  guns,  trucks  and  other  vehicles  which 
pass  Cabaret  on  the  way  toward  the  lines,  where  they  are 
often  in  direct  line  of  vision  from  the  German  observa- 
tion points,  have  adopted  a  wonderful,  highly  fantastic 
system  of  protective  coloring.  If  the  scientist  who  wrote 
about  the  tiger's  stripes  invisible  in  the  canebreak  and 
the  green  lizard  blended  in  the  grass,  could  have  seen  one 
of  these  convoys,  he  could  have  added  an  interesting 
chapter  to  his  book. 

The  biggest  canvas-topped  camions  or  trucks  are 
usually  painted  to  represent  an  old  stone  wall,  or  a  pile 
of  earth  and  stones.  The  stones  are  painted  different 
shades  of  neutral  gray,  while  even  the  irregular  lines  rep- 
resenting the  mortar  or  cement  are  skilfully  painted 
in  a  way  calculated  to  deceive  even  the  observer  with 
high-powered  binoculars.  Cannon  carriages,  and  even 
the  barrels  of  the  guns,  are  often  painted  dull  brown  and 
green  splotched  on  the  blend  with  foliage.  Some  of  the 
huge  wagons  are  covered  with  cane  or  tree  branches,  and 
masquerade,   like  the  army   in   Macbeth,   as   a  moving 


AMERICAN    AMBULANCE   FIELD   SERVICE  61 

forest.  All  white  horses  are  stained  pale  reddish  brown 
and  dirty  green,  like  a  poorly-done  mottled  Easter  egg. 
Apropos  of  horses,  some  of  our  men  were  remarking 
the  other  day  upon  the  curious  appearance  of  the  French 
horse-collars,  which  usually  have  two  immense  horns  or 
prongs  sticking  high  in  the  air  above  the  neck,  and  one 
of  the  alleged  wits  of  the  section  suggested  that  the  pur- 
pose might  be  to  make  the  German  aviators  think  the 
horses  were  cows ! 

Dugny,  July  27. — When  the  bombardment  of  our 
road  through  the  woods  just  outside  Verdun  became  too 
heavy,  we  now  take  another  route,  entering  the  Porte  St. 
Victor  and  traversing  the  city  itself,  emerging  later  from 
a  second  gate  and  thence  through  the  Faubourg  Pave  to 
Cabaret  Rouge.  We  also  receive  occasional  special  calls 
to  a  hospital  in  Verdun,  and  consequently  have  had  rare 
opportunity  to  see  the  deserted  city,  long  since  abandoned 
by  all  civilians  and  inhabited  now  only  by  a  few  soldiers, 
military  guards,  and  wolfish  dogs. 

The  city  retains  its  rugged  mediaeval  grandeur  in 
spite  of,  or  rather  perhaps  enhanced  by,  the  ravages  of 
the  enemy's  artillery.  In  one  quarter,  including  the  cen- 
tral business  district,  all  the  buildings  are  in  ruins,  while 
in  other  quarters  whole  streets  are  practically  intact,  with 
only  here  and  there  a  single  house  caved  in  by  a  chance 
shell. 

Verdun,  a  compact  city  of  normally  perhaps  20,000 
inhabitants,  crowns  a  hill  rising  from  the  Meuse,  and  is 
still  surrounded  by  its  old  walls.  The  cathedral,  with  its 
two  square  towers,  still  stands  at  the  highest  point,  and 


62  DIARY   OF   SECTION   VIII 

may  be  seen  for  miles  around.  Its  windows  are  all  shat- 
tered, and  many  surrounding  smaller  buildings  have  been 
wrecked,  but  only  two  shells  have  actually  struck  the 
church,  and  from  a  distance  it  still  appears  untouched. 
On  entering  the  ruined  part  of  the  city,  one  is  re- 
minded of  Pompeii,  not  merely  because  of  the  terrible 
loneliness  and  silence,  but  from  the  mute  evidences  on 
every  hand  of  the  sudden  and  unprepared  flight  of  the 
population.  In  some  of  the  stores  on  the  main  business 
street  the  whole  front  of  the  buildings  has  been  sheered 
away,  yet  inside,  among  the  fallen  fragments,  fragile 
goods  are  still  seen  exposed  on  counters  as  if  for  sale. 
In  a  cafe,  the  billiard  balls  and  cues  are  still  in  their 
racks  on  the  wall,  though  a  shell  which  came  through  the 
opposite  wall  has  destroyed  the  tables.  In  a  drug-store 
there  are  shelves,  along  which  tiny  piles  of  shattered  glass 
at  regular  intervals  show  where  the  bottles  used  to  stand. 
In  a  millinery  window,  delicate  be-flowered  and  be-rib- 
boned  hats,  like  dust-covered  flowers  on  their  slender 
stem-like  pedestals,  stand  untouched  within  a  few  feet 
of  huge  walls  which  have  crashed  to  earth.  In  a  second- 
story  room  of  a  dwelling  house  which  has  been  half  shot 
away,  a  candle-stub  with  its  blackened  wick  still  stands 
before  the  shattered  mirror  on  the  mantel,  and  the  bed- 
covering  still  lies  as  it  was  thrown  back  in  haste  by  the 
departing  owner.  Despite  the  silence,  despite  the  deso- 
lation, it  is  almost  impossible  to  believe  that  these  people 
have  been  gone  for  months.  Intimate  signs  of  life  are 
everywhere,  though  life  itself  has  departed. 
*         *         * 

Though  the  work  here  as  a  whole  is  not  as  dangerous 
as  in  June,  some  of  the  men  have  had  some  rather  nar- 


AMERICAN   AMBULANCE   FIELD   SERVICE  63 

row  escapes  since  we  returned.  Gartz  had  a  piece  of 
shell  through  the  top  of  his  car  yesterday,  and  Keogh  was 
missed  less  than  two  feet  by  a  fragment  that  struck  the 
seat  beside  him.  Keogh  had  another  narrow  escape  a 
day  or  two  ago  at  Cabaret,  when  a  brancardier  with 
whom  he  was  in  conversation  was  wounded  by  shrapnel, 
while  numbers  of  shells  apparently  intended  for  us  have 
fallen  dangerously  close  to  our  cars  on  the  Route  d'Etain 
beyond  Bellevue  farm,  in  the  Tavannes  neighborhood. 

The  Route  d'Etain  call,  which  can  only  be  made 
at  night  because  it  is  closer  to  the  lines  and  in  direct  view 
of  the  Germans,  is  perhaps  the  most  dangerous  we  are 
now  making.  We  usually  send  two  cars  there  between 
darkness  and  dawn,  and  the  realness  of  the  danger  is 
emphasized  by  the  fact  that  we  are  continually  warned 
not  to  smoke  cigarettes  beyond  Bellevue  farm  on  account 
of  the  danger  of  the  tiny  red  glow  being  seen,  and  not 
to  speak  in  loud  tones  for  fear  of  being  heard  in  the 
mysterious  silences  which  sometimes  occur  even  in  the 
heaviest  bombardment. 

Our  duty  is  to  wait  with  our  cars  at  a  certain  point 
in  the  road  until  the  stretcher-bearers  bring  the  wounded 
from  a  shelter  one  and  a  half  kilometres  further  on. 
carrying  them  that  distance  on  their  shoulders,  but  occa- 
sionally some  of  us  have  volunteered  to  leave  our  cars 
and  go  with  the  stretcher-bearers  on  foot  when  they 
needed  a  helping  hand.  On  such  trips,  there  are  usually 
four  bearers  to  each  wounded  man,  and  the  stretcher  is 
hoisted  on  our  shoulders.  It  is  on  these  rare  walks,  with 
no  noise  or  distraction  from  an  automobile,  that  we  are 
best  able  to  hear  and  see  the  more  intimate  sounds  and 


64  DIARY   OF    SECTION    VIII 

flashes  from  the  trenches.  Here  for  the  first  time  we 
have  heard  rifle  bullets  singing;  have  seen  the  trench 
rockets  go  up  so  close  that  they  seem  to  be  almost  over 
our  heads ;  and  have  heard  the  shrapnel  breaking  at  close 
range. 

It  is  in  this  general  zone  that  the  black  soup-kitchens 
on  wheels  are  brought,  with  their  already  steaming  caul- 
drons of  potage  and  coffee ;  and  they  are  met  by  the  poilus 
who  scurry  up  through  the  connecting  trenches,  with 
their  buckets  and  canteens  to  carry  food  back  to  their 
comrades.  The  soup-kitchen  work  is  extremely  dan- 
gerotis,  for  if  a  rocket  happens  to  show  one  of  them  on 
the  road  the  Germans  will  sacrifice  more  ammunition  on 
it  than  they  would  be  willing  to  use  to  destroy  a  whole 
company  of  men.  Next  to  actually  holding  the  trenches, 
the  keenest  struggle  on  both  sides  is  to  get  food  into  the 
first  lines  and  to  prevent  the  enemy  from  doing  so. 
When  we  are  close  to  the  front  we  have  learned  from 
experience  that  it  is  safer  to  be  near  a  battery  than  near 
a  "cuisine  roidante,"  as  they  call  them. 

*         *         * 

The  real  hero  of  Verdun  and  of  the  war  is  the  poilu, 
or  infantry  soldier,  of  the  first-line  trenches.  The  des- 
tiny of  France  is  in  his  keeping.  The  immortal  slogan, 
"Volts  ne  passer ez  pas,"  was  coined  in  the  trenches,  and 
the  triumphant,  "On  les  aura,"  which  has  replaced  it  in 
these  latter  days,  was  likewise  born  of  the  poilu. 

The  man  in  the  trenches  is  the  essential  factor.  The 
rest  of  us  back  here  among  the  batteries  and  observa- 
tion points  and  pastes  de  secours  are  engaged  solely  in 


AMERICAN   AMBULANCE   FIELD   SERVICE  65 

the  work  of  backing  up  his  efforts.  Whether  generals, 
artillerymen,  stretcher-bearers,  or  ambulance  drivers,  we 
are  here  only  to  protect  and  serve  the  man  out  yonder — 
preparing  the  way  before  him  with  shell  and  shrapnel 
when  he  advances — transporting  him  back,  covered  with 
blood  and  mud  and  glory,  when  his  work  is  done. 

History  will  tell  what  the  holding  of  Verdun  means 
for  civilization  and  what  it  has  cost  France;  but  only 
those  of  us  who  have  been  here  will  ever  know  what  it 
has  meant  for  the  individual  soldier.  They  are  not 
merely  dying  for  their  country.  They  are  enduring 
things  beyond  the  limit  of  human  endurance,  and  still 
living.  Where  all  semblance  of  trenches  and  shelter 
have  been  destroyed,  the  line  is  still  firm.  Where  fortifi- 
cations of  earth  and  stone  have  not  availed,  flesh  and 
blood  have  held  fast. 

One  of  the  men  in  the  ranks  of  our  division,  Joseph 
Bonvin  we  will  call  him,  has  told  us  something  of  what 
Verdun  meant  to  him,  and  his  experience  multiplied  by 
twelve  thousand  is  what  it  meant  to  our  division.  His 
story  is  worth  telling,  because  it  is  typical. 

When  we  first  made  his  acquaintance  he  was  lying 
under  a  tree  at  La  Veuve,  inhaling  the  perfume  of  a  rose, 
watching  the  summer  twilight  deepen  over  the  wheat- 
fields,  speculating  in  undertones  with  his  comrades  on 
whether  the  division  would  be  sent  to  Verdun  or  La 
Somme.  We  all  knew  pretty  well  it  would  be  one  or  the 
other,  for  the  Twelfth  is  one  of  the  great  "fighting 
divisions"  of  the  Sixth  Corps,  and  is  technically  known 
as  a  "division  d'attaque."  Joseph  guessed  it  would  be 
Verdun,  and  one  night  soon  afterward  the  Verdun  call 


66  DIARY   OF   SECTION   VIII 

came.  Aroused  at  midnight  by  the  bugles,  with  his 
twelve  thousand  comrades,  Joseph  marched  out  of  Le 
Veuve  at  1  a.m.  in  the  darkness  and  rain,  "pan,  pan, 
pan,"  through  the  mud,  his  back  bent  beneath  rifle,  mess- 
kit,  knapsack,  blanket-roll,  cantines,  cartridge-belt, 
weighing  in  all  some  45  pounds.  Some  of  us  shook  hands 
with  him  as  he  filed  past  the  church  corner,  and  we 
wished  his  load  could  have  been  lighter. 

He  marched  till  dawn,  and  about  sunrise  arrived  at 
the  railroad  station  of  H — ,  where  they  loaded  him, 
with  some  of  his  comrades,  into  a  box-car  marked  in 
white  letters,  "8  chevaux,  40  hommes"  (eight  horses, 
forty  men),  and  he  sank  down  into  the  straw  and  went 
to  sleep.  All  night  long  and  until  noon  the  train  rumbled, 
for  such  trains  move  slowly,  and  finally  they  arrived 
at  the  Revigny  railroad  head.  A  breakfast  of  hot  coffee, 
cheese,  and  hard  army  bread,  and  a  crowded  barn  to 
sleep  the  rest  of  the  day  in  (for  new  troops  moving 
toward  Verdun  are  "fed  up"  on  sleep,  seeing  that  they 
will  not  get  much  after  they  arrive),  and  Joseph  is 
loaded  into  another  box-car  to  be  transported  to  the  vil- 
lage of  X — ,  only  six  kilometres  behind  Verdun,  where 
the  division  stops  a  day  to  get  itself  together  for  the 
night  march  up  through  the  hills  and  down  into  the 
trenches. 

So  it  comes  about  that  the  next  night,  as  our  little 
Red-Cross  cars  mount  the  Verdun  hill  among  the  con- 
voys and  amid  the  dust,  we  overtake  and  pass  Joseph 
and  his  comrades  trudging  along  toward  the  battle- 
front,  from  which  they  know  many  of  their  number  will 
not  return.    Despite  that  realization,  which  shows  plainly 


AMERICAN    AMBULANCE   FIELD   SERVICE  67 

enough  in  their  faces,  they  find  courage  to  recognize  us 
and  shout  a  passing  greeting. 

"Remember,  I  am  billeted  for  a  return  ride  in  the 
belle  petite  voiture,"  cries  Joseph,  and  though  he  was 
speaking  in  fun  his  wish  later  came  true. 

At  Cabaret  Rouge  we  saw  the  last  of  them — for  a 
time.  Having  reached  this  point  by  the  same  road  over 
which  the  ambulances,  ammunition-convoys,  and  ravi- 
taillement  travel,  they  turned  sharply  to  the  left  and  dis- 
appeared into  the  seven- foot-deep  hoyoiis,  or  connecting- 
trenches,  which  form  the  protected  path  for  men  afoot 
in  the  dangerous  zone  between  the  poste  de  secours  and 
the  first-line  trenches. 

By  way  of  explanation  it  may  be  well  to  note  that 
the  so-mrch-talked-of  "first,  second,  and  third-line 
trenches"  are  more  theoretical  than  real  on  a  battle- 
front  like  the  Verdun  sector.  There  are  trenches  every- 
where for  a  depth  of  four  or  five  miles  behind  the  fight- 
ing front,  except  where  they  have  been  destroyed  by 
shell  fire,  but  the  trenches  behind  the  first  line  are  for 
communication  and  to  fall  back  on.  It  is  only  in  the  first 
line  that  the  infantrymen  fight.  In  a  sector  bombarded 
like  Verdun  the  real  battlefront  consists  of  that  first  line, 
whether  it  is  holding  out  in  trenches,  shell-holes,  or  forts, 
and  behind  it  the  artillery.  The  space  between  the  lines 
and  batteries  is  where  the  American  Ambulance  works ; 
but  it  is  only  on  rare  occasions  that  any  of  us  go  closer 
than  within  two  kilometres  of  the  first  line.  Ordinarily, 
we  load  our  cars  with  wounded  who  have  been  brought 
on  stretchers  through  the  boyous  to  Cabaret,  but  occa- 
sionally special  calls  come  asking  that  a  single  car  be  sent 


68  DIARY   OF   SECTION   VIII 

to  a  certain  more  advanced  spot  on  a  certain  road,  and 
it  is  these  calls  that  are  most  dangerous,  as  sometimes 
we  get  in  direct  line  of  vision  with  the  German  artillery 
observation  posts.  Sometimes  on  such  trips  we  find  the 
wounded  men  on  stretchers  in  a  ditch  by  the  road  with 
a  stretcher-bearer  keeping  guard  over  them,  but  fre- 
quently it  also  happens  that  we  have  to  hunt  for  the 
wounded  men  ourselves  and  find  them  lying  helpless  by 
the  roadside  unattended  by  anyone.  These  are  the 
most  dangerous  and  at  the  same  time  the  most  interest- 
ing calls,  especially  at  night,  as  the  red  and  green  rockets 
look  very  near,  and  amid  the  occasional  lulls  in  the  artil- 
lery fire  we  can  distinctly  hear  the-  rattle  of  the  machine- 
guns  and  the  popping  of  the  rifles.  So  accustomed  are 
our  ears  to  the  louder  noise  of  the  cannon,  that  the  rifle 
shots  seem  low-toned  and  muffled  like  the  sound  of  an 
army  of  woodpeckers  tapping  on  telegraph  poles.  The 
machine-guns  sound  like  packages  of  small  firecrackers 

touched  off  under  a  tin  pail. 

*         *         * 

The  roads  to  such  advanced  points  are  always  badly 
torn  up  by  shells,  making  it  necessary  to  go  a  great  part 
of  the  distance  in  low  speed,  and  night  driving  is  com- 
plicated by  the  fact  that  when  artillery  moves  in  this 
zone  it  moves  where  possible  at  a  trot  or  gallop  and  cedes 
the  road  to  nobody.  Back  of  the  lines  ambulances  are 
often  given  the  road  by  courtesy,  but  under  fire  the 
right  of  way  belongs  to  the  artillery,  come  what  may. 
When  night  driving  is  further  complicated  by  gas,  and 
we  have  to  wear  our  masks,  which  are  not  easy  to  see 
arid  hear  through,  the  danger  of  being  wrecked  by  the 


AMERICAN    AMBULANCE   FIELD   SERVICE  69 

galloping  artillery  is  often  greater  than  the  danger  of 
being  hit  by  shells. 

But  let  us  return  to  Joseph  and  his  comrades,  who 
disappeared  from  our  view  in  the  boyous  leading  from 
Cabaret.  We  know  what  happened  to  them  only  from 
piecing  together  their  descriptions  in  the  evacuation  hos- 
pital later.  As  they  went  further  into  the  din  the  stench 
and  noise  kept  increasing.  The  French  curtain-fire 
shrieked  over  their  heads,  protecting  their  advance  and 
crashing  above  the  German  trenches  now  only  a  few  hun- 
dred yards  distant.  German  shells  were  breaking  all 
around,  and  in  many  places  the  hoyoii  became  only  an 
unprotected  mass  of  overturned  earth.  Some  of  Joseph's 
comrades  began  to  drop  around  him,  for  the  division 
suffered  a  tLn  per  cent  loss  before  they  ever  reached  the 
line  and  began  fighting  (yet  in  Napoleon's  time,  the 
books  on  military  tactics  advised  a  leader  to  fall  back 
when  his  losses  amounted  to  over  five  per  cent). 

It  was  midnight  when  the  division  reached  the  line 
of  shell-craters  and  hastily  reconstructed  earthworks 
that  had  once  been  the  first-line  trenches — for  neither 
French  nor  German  have  any  real  trenches,  in  the  proper 
sense  of  the  word,  on  this  front.  They  simply  dig  into 
the  shell-torn  ground  and  hold  on. 

Crouching  elbow  to  elbow  with  his  comrades,  Joseph 
waited  for  orders.  His  particular  part  in  an  attack  is 
that  of  "nettoyeur  des  tranchees,"  which  means  "trench- 
cleaner"  in  literal  English;  but  he  uses  a  long  knife  and 
an  automatic  pistol  instead  of  a  broom,  and  it  is  the 
German  trenches  and  not  the  French  that  he  cleans.  Jo- 
seph is  small,  wiry,  muscular,  capable  of  lightning-like 


70  DIARY   OF    SECTION    VIII 

rapidity  in  his  movements.  He  follows  immediately 
behind  the  bayonets,  leaping  into  the  carried  trench  or 
position,  shooting  and  slashing  as  he  leaps,  pistol  in  left 
hand  and  knife  in  right,  fighting  it  out  to  the  death  with 
those  whom  the  bullets  and  bayonets  overlooked  as  they 
swept  onward.  Joseph  isn't  so  strong  for  the  pistol, 
which  he  uses  principally  to  protect  himself,  but  he  is  a 
wonder  with  the  knife.  Before  the  war  he  was  a  book- 
keeper at  Paris,  and  his  most  brutal  diversion  was  the 
mild  French  form  of  association  football  on  Sunday 
afternoons.  He  is  engaged  to  be  married,  is  a  lover  of 
flowers,  and  sings  charming  ballads  to  the  accompaniment 
of  the  guitar. 

This  was  the  Joseph  who  leaped  after  his  comrades, 
shrieking  like  a  madman,  when  attack  began. 

Three  minutes  afterward  he  found  himself  standing 
knee-deep  among  writhing  bodies,  covered  from  head  to 
foot  with  blood,  his  own  blood  and  that  of  a  dozen  Ger- 
mans. He  was  slightly  wounded  in  the  shoulder,  but 
he  had  done  his  work. 

Thirty  seconds  later  he  was  half  buried  by  an  ex- 
ploding shell,  his  hip  and  left  arm  being  shattered. 

Thirty  hours  later  his  surviving  comrades  found 
him,  lying  among  the  corpses,  still  conscious  and  moan- 
ing for  water. 

As  soon  as  it  was  dark  enough  the  stretcher-bearers 
brought  him  back  to  Cabaret,  where  a  hypodermic  injec- 
tion mercifully  eased  his  suffering  while  the  temporary 
bandages  applied  by  his  comrades  were  removed  and 
replaced  by  better  dressings. 

So  he  had  his  wish,  though  he  was  too  far  gone  to 


AMERICAN   AMBULANCE   FIELD   SERVICE  71 

know  it.  We  brought  him  back  to  Dugny  in  one  of  our 
"belles  petites  voitiires,"  and  one  of  our  own  men  rode 
inside  (against  all  rules  and  precedents)  to  make  it  a 
little  easier  for  him  in  case  he  should  regain  conscious- 
ness. 

It  makes  it  infinitely  more  real  and  personal  and  in- 
finitely more  terrible — this  transportation  of  men  whose 
names  we  know,  of  friends  with  whom  we  were  singing 
and  playing  football  in  the  sunshine  only  a  few  days  ago 
at  La  Veuve — it  makes  our  work  harder  in  a  way,  but 
at  the  same  time  more  worth  while. 

Joseph  is  going  to  get  well.  Also  he  is  going  to  have 
the  croix  de  guerre  and  the  medaille  militaire.  As  soon 
as  he  is  strong  enough  to  survive  the  railroad  journey 
he  will  complete  the  last  stage  of  his  Odyssy  as  he  began 
it,  in  a  little  box-car  marked  "8  Chevaux,  40  Hommes." 

For  Joseph  the  great  war  is  over.  He  will  be  ten- 
derly cared  for  in  some  big  hospital  in  the  interior;  his 
sweetheart  will  come  to  visit  him  in  the  ward,  and  as 
soon  as  he  is  able  to  hobble  about  on  crutches  they  will 
be  married.  Her  husband  will  be  a  hero,  he  is  one  of  the 
men  who  has  saved  France.  But  he  will  be  a  cripple 
for  life. 

Multiply  Joseph  by  thousands  of  other  Josephs  who 
have  gone  through  like  experiences — then  add  the  tragic 
background  of  the  still  other  thousands  of  Josephs  who 
will  never  come  back  to  their  sweethearts,  and  you  may 
begin  to  have  some  idea  of  what  it  means  to  hold  Verdun. 
*         ♦         « 

The  End 


'^. 


THOMAS   TODD   CO.,   PRINTERS 
BOSTON,    MASS. 


■VO 

'MIS" 


UC  SOUTHERN  RFniO\'AL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


AA    000  387  036 


University  of  California 

SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 

305  De  Neve  Drive  -  Parking  Lot  17  •   Box  951388 

LOS  ANGELES,  CALIFORNIA  90095-1388 

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